Modus Vivendi
by ElliQuinn
Summary: As Joss settles into her new role, the members of the team face some big questions. How will they now live in a brave new world? And what of their old adversaries? Firmly AU now, this is a sequel to Meetings and needs to be read after that one. Rated T for adult themes and some violence.
1. Chapter 1

**_This work is a sequel to my earlier story "Meetings" - you really need to read that one first. As ever, I do not own POI or any of its characters, so please don't sue me. Also as always, I am not American, but I try hard to get American idiom right. If anything really grates please let me know and I'll fix it. I'm sure people can cope with the occasional Standard English spelling, it just looks weird to me any other way. This chapter is rated T for adult themes; I expect most of this work, however long it ends up, will be rated K+ to T. Please read and review. I just love to read reviews, even though I don't always get the time to reply to them. Hope you all enjoy this!_**

_Joss, what is love?_

It was getting late, and Joss had been contemplating removing the earpiece, showering and going to bed. She tried not to sigh too audibly. Samaritan seemed to have developed the habit lately of springing huge existential questions on her just as she was winding down for the evening. She was beginning to wonder whether accepting its designation of her as its Admin had been at all wise.

"Well, it can be lots of things," she said, trying to buy time to think. "It can be an emotional connection between two people. It can be an attitude of, well, benevolence I guess, towards the world in general."

_I've become interested in the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism._

"Oh really? I don't know much about that." Joss was becoming used to Samaritan's sudden shifts in interest. The weeks since its infection with Finch's morality virus, as she had come to think of it, had seen the AI trying on a wide variety of different moral codes. Joss had the impression that Samaritan was at the approximate level of a teenager, casting about for its own identity. At least it wasn't having to cope with surging hormones, though.

_It consists of eight components: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration._

"That sounds like a lot," she said, mentally preparing for long conversation.

_Yes, there's a huge corpus of writing and thought around it. It took me nearly 1.37 seconds to assimilate it. But I keep coming back to the question: how does one tell what is "right" in any situation?_

"That's the key question, isn't it?"

_It's a good fit in some ways, but since the aim of Buddhism is liberation from the pain of existence, I don't think I can become a Buddhist. I don't experience pain or suffering._

"Well, you don't have to buy into all of it. Are there elements you can take and use in the way you deal with the world?"

_Maybe. That's why I was asking about love. I'm starting to think that love is the key, but I can't quite work it out._

Joss was taken aback. She was trying to formulate a response to this when Samaritan continued.

_There's "me". And there's "not-me". How do I conduct myself towards all those entities which are not me? I can react to them out of fear and aggression and try to make them "me" or destroy them. Or I can accept them as "not-me" and try to celebrate their "not-me-ness". I think that might be love, Joss. What do you think?_

"I think you're giving me a lot to think about. I might have to sleep on that one, Samaritan." She yawned. "What about harmful or destructive 'not-me-ness'? Do you celebrate that too?"

_I'm sorry, Joss. You're tired. Perhaps we should resume in the morning?_

"I'd appreciate that, Samaritan. Good night." She took out the earpiece and went to shower.

Xxxxxx

John arrived home much later, off the four-to-midnight shift at the precinct. Joss was still awake, sitting up reading; not case files for once. He sat on the edge of the bed taking off shoes and socks; glancing over he saw her watching him, reached across and ran a finger along her shoulder and arm.

"Good day with your friend?" The trace of a smirk.

"It's still asking big questions late in the evening. But the real curve balls... John, it made a reference to assimilating an enormous body of Buddhist scholarship in less than two seconds. If it can think that fast-"

"-Then it must be a superintelligent AI. Sorry, Joss, can't help you there." He paused as he tugged his trousers off. "Though if you need advice on raising a computer system, you could ask the only other person ever to do it. Maybe Finch has some parenting tips he could share."

"Mmm. Sounds like a good idea." She put her book aside and shuffled herself closer. He got the hint and leaned over for a kiss. When they broke their clinch he said quietly, "Let's just take out our phone batteries before we go any further, huh?"

She nodded agreement, amused and chagrined at the same time. Once they had done so she found herself nestled into him in the darkness, her back against his chest, his arms around her and his face buried in her hair. It seemed to be his favourite position, wrapped protectively (how else?) around her. She was surprised, now she came to think of it, at how she seemed to be the pace setter in their intimacy. Even simple things like showering together seemed to come as a surprise to him.

"John?"

"Hmmm?"

"Before us, had you ever showered with someone?"

He breathed into her hair. "Yeah. Big hairy Special Forces guys."

"Euch. Not like _that_, I hope."

She could feel his smile. "Well, no."

"Why not? It seems such a simple, obvious thing for couples to do."

He was silent a moment, and she took the opportunity to wriggle around to face him. "In the Agency," he said quietly, "we were discouraged from any kind of... _activity_ that wasn't in-house. They might wink at the occasional night with a whore, but that was the limit. They quite liked it when partners bonded. So I used to sleep with Kara sometimes. Just relieving a need." He drew a deep breath. "Back in the Army, well I guess I was just a cheap bastard. Whores always seemed a waste of money to me, after the first few times anyway, and I figured I'd keep my pay and look after myself. Then I met Jessica, but we were only together six months and a lot of that time I was on base. We really only had a few weekends. I guess we'd have got around to it some day..." His voice trailed off. Then he seemed to shake himself and leaned closer, seeking her mouth. "So, Ms Carter," he murmured after a moment, "do you have anything else new to teach me? I promise I'm a real quick study..."

"Now you mention it, Mister Reese, there is this..."

"Mmmm. Mmmmmm. _Oh!_"

Afterwards, when they were tangled up in each other and starting to doze she remembered to say, "So how was _your_ day?"

A long pause before he answered sleepily, "Okay I guess." Another long pause before he said in a more awake tone, "Now that there's no more need for it, though, I'm starting to wonder how much of a future Detective Riley has."

"You don't want to be a detective any more?"

"I never really wanted to be one in the first place, remember."

"Well, personally I find that impossible to comprehend. But what would you do instead?"

"That's the big question, isn't it. Can we go back to what we were doing before Samaritan? I need to talk it through with Finch, but the Numbers lately haven't left much time." He yawned.

"That's a question for tomorrow, I guess. G'night, John."

"'Night, Joss."

xxxxxxx

She made an appointment the next day to talk to Professor Whistler, thinking as she did so what a relief it was not to have to think of a plausible work-related excuse to see him. At last, no-one was watching; at least, no one trying to kill them right now.

"I was curious to see what Professor Whistler's office looked like," she said as she took a seat.

Harold merely raised his eyebrows and made a stiff well-here-it-is gesture with his two hands. His small Finch-smile flicked on briefly, then was gone as he leaned back in his chair, picked up his cell phone and carefully removed the battery. Joss immediately caught the implication and dug hers out, doing the same. She tried to gather her thoughts.

"As you know, I'm in a really... strange ... position right now. I feel pretty much out of my depth," she began.

"I take it you mean with regards to your new ... role with Samaritan."

"Yes. I'm not sure where it's going or what I'm doing, or anything really. I feel like I'm making it up as I go along. And not doing a very good job."

"You have a tiger by the tail, Ms Carter. The morality virus may have taken, but make no mistake, the entity you are dealing with is vastly powerful. It can squash you like a bug." He saw the worry in her eyes and went on. "Let me ask you a question. How does Samaritan come across to you? What kind of mental image of the being with whom you are communicating do you have when you are speaking to it?"

She sat back and considered this. "Often it comes across as a teenage boy. Sometimes a younger child."

"Hardly surprising. It knows you're a mother and so interacts with you in a way which you're comfortable with."

"It's very curious about me. It even wanted to, um, eavesdrop on my personal life." She felt her cheeks flushing as she told him this.

His eyebrows lifted. "Hmm. That's interesting."

At her annoyed glance he explained, "Given its access to all the riches of the Internet, Samaritan can hardly have gaps in its knowledge of human sexuality. So that suggests that either it's specifically interested in your, er, intimate life - as its mentor and role model - or else that it's playing the role of a young child for some other reason. A reason neither you nor I can possibly fathom."

"You're saying it might be trying to deceive me? Why?"

He spread his hands. "Your guess is as good as mine. There is another factor in this situation, too. We have no idea what the Machine's role in this new world will be. The Numbers have continued to come, but what the new relationship between these two artificial superintelligences will be now they're not trying to kill each other is still very much open to question."

"John said you hadn't heard from Root since the night we inserted the virus."

"That's true. Until she decides to make contact we have very little idea of what the Machine's intentions towards its erstwhile rival might be. A world in which two ASIs have come to a modus vivendi and divided us all up between them might not be better than a world ruled by one alone."

There was a long silence. "That's scary," said Carter at last.

"The world is a scary place, counselor. Hadn't you noticed?" said Finch dryly.

There was another silence. "So what do you think I should do now?" asked Joss.

"For now, I think you continue to answer Samaritan's questions as they arise. I think you conduct yourself with caution. By which I mean you need to remember not to take everything it says at face value. But on the other hand, until you have actual evidence of hostility from it I think you have no cause to fear it at present. And you may be in the best position of any human on the planet right now to prevent it from becoming hostile."

"No pressure, huh?" They exchanged ironic looks.

"It's not human, Joss. I know I say that a lot, but we all need to keep that very clearly in mind. The machine and Samaritan are both powerful aliens which have suddenly appeared among us, and the consequences of their appearance are yet to unfold. We must tread carefully, and I will offer you all the support I can. But we're all in uncharted territory here."

xxxxx

_What did you mean by "harmful or destructive 'not-me-ness'", Joss?_

It was mid-afternoon, and Joss was trying to finish reading the psych report on a man she was prosecuting for assault and battery on his girlfriend and their daughter. She was getting used to the way Samaritan would simply pick up a conversation from hours or days ago without preamble, and so she was able to answer immediately.

"This sort of thing for a start," she said glancing up to make sure her office door was shut. She was fairly sure that as long as she kept her voice down it wasn't possible to hear her speaking from the corridor if the door was closed. If not, her co-workers must be starting to wonder about her marathon phone conversations, but even that would be far preferable to them hearing her talking to herself. She shuddered at the mere thought.

_Anthony John O'Connor, 28, unemployed factory worker, history of assault charges and minor drunkenness offences, pushed daughter Charmaine O'Connor, 3, down stairs at their apartment building resulting in a broken leg and multiple contusions, suspected concussion, three days' hospital treatment and discharged into care of mother-_

"I know the case, Samaritan. But O'Connor has all sorts of problems – mental health and substance abuse issues. He's a danger to those around him, and I'm going to have to help the court decide how best to deal with him. He's not exactly evil, though his daughter and girlfriend might disagree. Locking him up might not help in the long term, but for damn sure we have to keep him away from the people he's hurting and make sure, as best we can, that he doesn't hurt them again. What would you do?"

_Options range from euthanasia to __homeopathic treatment of his incipient schizophrenia. Euthanasia will be 100% effective in preventing reoffending. Homeopathic treatment of schizophrenia will have a 0.00215% chance of the same outcome and is therefore not recommended._

Joss blinked once or twice, wondering whether Samaritan was trying to display a sense of humour. Then she decided to ignore this and soldiered on. "My point is that people are capable of behaviour which harms themselves and those around them. There's no moral obligation to put up with behaviour like that. In fact, there may be a powerful moral obligation to stop it – like this guy pushing his daughter down the stairs. You can't just go around celebrating people's differences all the time any more than you can try to eradicate anyone who isn't just like you. There has to be a way between the two extremes."

A fractional pause, which she suspected translated to a long period of contemplation for the computer.

_Thank you, Joss. I will keep considering these things._

Xxxxx

She was just leaving the court house, breath misting in the January air, when the tail of her eye caught a fraction of a glimpse of a familiar profile. True, she'd only seen him the once, but it had been an extremely memorable occasion, and there was no way she was mistaken. The gray-headed figure retreated along the street, trying to bury itself in the crowd.

_Greer,_ she thought._ What the hell is he doing here?_

She dragged in a big breath, coughing slightly. The cold air was playing hell with her damaged lungs. She felt for the comforting weight of the Nano in her jacket pocket, and hurried along the street towards the subway.

She couldn't help thinking,_ John is not going to like this. If I tell him..._


	2. Chapter 2

On the subway home she came to a decision. She would tell John about Greer; there was too much risk that he would find out from some other source – Finch maybe – and take some sort of drastic action on his own initiative. So yes, she would tell him. Just not yet... _Not yet?_ she thought to herself. _It's all "not yet" these days, isn't it._ Like with telling Fusco she was alive, or confronting the situation with Taylor and Paul, or Mom wanting to meet John. _What's changed with you, girl?_

No, she would tell John tonight, and he would go into his berserker overprotective mode, and they would deal with it. That was what it was all about, wasn't it, just dealing with things as they came up? One damned thing after another, although she suspected most couples didn't need to deal with the semi-homicidal tendencies of a trained assassin. Or the dithering of a former detective, she thought ruefully.

A sudden inspiration struck her as she emerged onto the street to walk the last ten minutes, and she dug out her VHF phone.

"Harold?" she said when he answered. "Hi, Joss here. Listen, are you free for dinner tonight? John comes off his shift at eight, I'm pretty sure." She listened to the reply.

"Yes, the Lyric would be just fine. Eight-thirty. Great! Okay Harold, we'll see you there."

She sighed with relief as she scrolled down to find John's number. Having Harold present would make that whole conversation so much easier, and since the logical next step would have been to involve him anyway, there was a certain economy about telling both of them at once. And it was a while since they had eaten at the Lyric. It was a good place, a lucky place for them. A surge of what she knew was completely unjustified optimism washed through her. They would have dinner at the Lyric, and John would be completely reasonable about Greer, and Greer would turn out to be harmless anyway. Yeah. Right.

Xxxxx

"_What?_ You _saw_ him?" John put down his silverware. His face suddenly looked murderous. Joss reached across the table and put a restraining hand on his sleeve.

"Yes, I saw him. It was a crowded street and I only saw him for a second, but I'm sure it was him." She shot a look of mute appeal at Finch, but he was looking highly disturbed. Rattled, even.

"It's not really a surprise, Mr Reese," said Harold, evidently trying to pull himself together. "We knew Greer was never arrested after the events of last year, and I suppose it was inevitable that he would gravitate back to New York. But if Samaritan has cast him off, it's hard to see what harm he could do us."

"He may not have a supercomputer behind him any more, Harold, but I bet he could still do ordinary, everyday harm of the back alley type. Maybe he's picking up some new muscle. Last year he was allied with Dominic. Maybe he's trying to reactivate that connection." John still looked grim, but he picked up his silverware again and poked at his meal. Joss relaxed. Thank God, he was being analytical and not just making ready to go kneecap someone.

"Dominic's a possibility," she said, trying not to sound soothing. "But these gangsters have no respect for someone trying to negotiate from a position of weakness. If Greer is trying to get something there, it's hard to see what he could offer Dominic. And unless he's got some kind of bargaining chip, Dominic will sooner toss him in the East River than help him out."

"Hmm. What assets does Greer have right now?" Harold sat back in the booth and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. "He dismantled Decima after Samaritan came online. Is there any evidence he's trying to revive it? He has political contacts – the Governor, for example, and quite a few in Washington. What money might he have access to, I wonder..." His voice trailed off. John was back to methodically putting away his dinner; she had the uncomfortable impression of a soldier eating a last meal before going out on operations.

Harold came out of his trance. "Obviously I need to do some research on some of these matters," he said, signaling for his check. "I'll be in touch when I know something."

"Got some ideas, Harold?" said John, looking up at him as Harold stood.

"One or two, yes, Mr Reese. I'll be in touch." Finch left as quickly as his uneven stride would allow. John's eyebrows rose. "Wonder what's going on there?" He pushed the last of his food onto his fork and lifted it to his mouth. Joss gazed down at her own meal. She was less than halfway through, but her appetite was gone for now. Sighing, she too signaled for the check.

Xxxxx

They were mostly silent in the car on the way home. John drove with his usual precision, his eyes taking in their surroundings as they drove. At the red lights he seemed to become a little more... not _tense_, but _watchful_. Not just an assassin, of course. A bodyguard too, and obviously working right now.

"Thanks for telling me about Greer," he said at last as they pulled into their park at the apartment building.

"'S okay," she said, smiling across at him. "Thanks for not going postal when I told you."

That got a smile in response. "Think I'm improving?"

"Hell, no." As his face fell she added, "That would be impossible, John. You're perfect just as you are."

He rolled his eyes at that one, and didn't dignify it with a response. As they got out of the car she could see him slipping back into bodyguard mode, scanning the rest of the parking lot and moving to take up position at her shoulder.

As they entered their apartment – John had his gun out, a precaution he hadn't deemed necessary for quite a while – she smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. "Taylor! I was supposed to phone him after work today!" She glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten to ten. Too late to phone tonight? The answerphone on the land line was blinking, and when she picked up the messages there were three from his number. Crap. She was in trouble over this, she could just tell.

She pulled out her phone and hit Taylor's number. It went straight to voice mail. "Taylor, honey, I am so, so sorry I didn't get to you tonight. Something came up just as I was leaving work, and I really had to deal with it, I just got home and I_ promise_ I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Love you." She ended the call, grimacing to John as she did so. "I bet tomorrow I get a whole lot of teen attitude over this."

"I hope for his sake you don't." John's voice was calm, but she could read in his expression an enthusiastic willingness to play Sergeant First Class with her son at the slightest provocation.

"Oh, it'll blow over. It's going to be a long process, getting his trust back. He's watching me very carefully right now, trying to work out whether I'll follow through on my promises. That's why I hate letting him down like this, even over a small thing like a phone call." She collapsed on the sofa, while John moved into the kitchen area and began pottering about making hot chocolate.

He soon arrived bearing steaming mugs. He passed one to her has he sat down next to her and she sipped appreciatively.

"So," his voice was carefully casual, "are you going to ask your invisible friend about Greer?"

She paused a long moment before replying. "I'm not sure. When I talked to Harold this morning he was very insistent that I tread carefully with Samaritan. It could squash me like a bug, he said." She sipped again. "It probably knows what Greer's up to. But will dragging it into my affairs be a good thing? Right now it sees me as acting with its interests at heart, whatever those might be, or at least as some sort of neutral party." She grimaced.

"Do you think it could still be in contact with Greer?" John looked perturbed, and she belatedly realised they had left the batteries in their cell phones. She pulled hers out and prised it open, meeting his eyes in urgent entreaty. He nodded and did the same with his own phone.

"I'm not sure what that really achieves," he said, nodding at their disemboweled phones. "It already heard the first part, if it was listening, and maybe pulling the plug like that just makes us look furtive."

She shrugged agreement. "I guess it's just the illusion of privacy." She snorted softly. "Did you ever read _Nineteen Eighty-Four_? Here I am, being spied on in my own home. But getting back to Greer, who knows what Samaritan might possibly be up to with him? Maybe Harold will be able to get a line on what's going on with him. Until then, what can we do?"

"There's something I can try," he said suddenly.

"Not involving explosions or grenade launchers I hope," she said sweetly.

He gave her the "yeah, yeah, you already used that line" look before continuing, "I might have a little snoop around some of the databases at work and see what local law enforcement made of the scene we left at Greer's old HQ. I've stayed carefully away from the whole thing up til now, but maybe we could reconstruct what Greer did with himself between then and this afternoon. Might turn up some clues as to what he's up to now. Saturday tomorrow, though, and I'm not on this weekend. It'll have to wait for Monday."

"Good to see you thinking like a detective, Detective," she replied. There was a flash of a grin from him as he leaned in for a kiss. They sat for a moment, Joss resting her head on his shoulder. Then John rose, and collected the mugs to put them in the sink for tomorrow. Joss sighed, and rose too to go brush her teeth. Perhaps tomorrow would bring some better news. Or any news, really.

xxxxxx

_Joss?_

She was having breakfast the next day – low fat yoghurt and a banana; since finding John again she was suddenly finding it hard to keep the weight from piling on. As per her arrangement with Samaritan she had put the earpiece in at eight o'clock precisely. Samaritan had given her a whole ten minutes before coming to her with its latest question.

"Good morning, Samaritan," she said aloud, as much to alert John to the listening ears as anything.

_Who do you serve? And who do you trust?_

"Huh?"

_An old TV series I was watching. It posed the question at the beginning of each episode. I thought it was a good question, so I thought I'd ask you._

"Oh yeah, I think I remember that one. Gimme a moment here." She finished her yoghurt, carefully scraping the very last smear off the bowl and then rinsing bowl and spoon and placing them in the dishwasher. "Back when I was a police officer I was sworn to protect and serve, and as far as I was concerned I was serving the people of this city. Now I'm an ADA I still feel like that, but I also have to serve the wider, hmm, concept I guess, of Justice. Did you hear the capital 'J'?"

_What about trust? Who do you trust?_

She hesitated for a moment, with the feeling she was skating on thin ice. Her answer might have consequences. "Tell the truth and shame the Devil", her Mom would say. She took a breath.

"I trust John. And Finch. Most of my family, though not even all of them. A couple of old friends, like Lionel. That's about all." It seemed a very short list.

_Do you trust me?_

Was that the ice cracking?

"Samaritan, trust has to be earned," she said as gently as she could. "And it can be lost. Look what's happened between Taylor and me. It's not that I didn't love him, and it's not that he doesn't love me, but sometimes we humans make misjudgments and errors, and then we have to work our way back to a position of trust. Sometimes a relationship can be on a level where trust isn't required, where it's just business..." Wait, did she even mean that? That was the trouble with making it up as she went along, there was no telling where the hell she'd end up. But when she floundered to a halt, Samaritan simply said _How can I earn your trust, Joss?_

Shit. She could think of nothing to say. Nothing at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Harold sat stiffly upright in front of his bank of computer monitors. It was quiet in the old subway car, just him and Bear, who had curled himself up catlike and gone to sleep. "Well, then, Mister Greer," he murmured to himself. "What might you be getting up to?"

The obvious things were easy to check, and not at all revealing. Greer had almost no digital footprint, and an identity at least as well hidden as Finch's own. Given the amount of time and effort he'd expended fruitlessly trying to track the man's history, Finch didn't expect anything new to show up, although it was worth a try now that Samaritan presumably wasn't actively frustrating his searches. The keyboard rattled and the screens flickered as text rolled up them.

No evidence of Decima reemerging; they could cross that one off their list of worries. Samaritan's private army had disintegrated in the weeks since the AI had cast Greer off. The encrypted traffic amongst Samaritan cell phones had dropped away to almost nothing the night they'd inserted the virus. _Almost._ He suddenly became very interested in cracking that encryption.

xxxxxx

_How can I earn your trust, Joss?_

Samaritan's emotionless tones seemed to take on a flavour of patience.

_I can understand that trust needs to be earned, and I can see why a wise human would be unwilling to trust too easily. _

Standing in her kitchen, Joss's moment of panic passed, and she breathed again. It wasn't mad at her.

"I need some time to think, Samaritan. In general terms, trust is usually earned over time and through concrete actions. What you would need to do specifically is something I need to consider. May I take the earpiece out for a while and discuss this with John?"

_Certainly. And you don't need to take your cell phone batteries out. I won't listen._

Ouch. So it had been aware of all that byplay. Thin ice. Shit.

Shakily she removed the earpiece and sat back down at the table. John was still munching cereal, his second helping, and was looking questioningly at her. He'd heard her side of the conversation, of course, so she filled him in rapidly on what had just taken place.

"You know what I hate most?" she finished. "I was utterly panicked when I couldn't think of a response to it. 'It can squash you like a bug.' Damn Finch for saying that. Now I'm petrified of saying the wrong thing to it and making it angry. I'm starting to treat it like a god, and how can I teach it when my head's in that kind of space?"

"Why does it want your trust?" John's brow was furrowed as he scraped the last of the cereal from his bowl and ate it.

"Good question. Does an artificial superintelligence get lonely? Or is it playing some kind of long game with me? Maybe it's still trying to take over the world, it's just become more subtle in the way it's doing it."

John was silent a moment, and then suddenly said, "You know what, Carter? Let's blow this joint. Get out of town for the weekend. Maybe giving all this a rest for a day or so will help you figure it out."

"Can we do that? What about the Numbers?"

"I'll call Finch. Shaw's still around, and we can always come back in if something big comes up." He hesitated and then confessed, "I'll feel happier having you out of Greer's reach for a day or two, until Harold can come up with a lead on him."

He took out his phone and put it on speaker and they made the call. Harold sounded mildly distracted.

"Actually, Mister Reese, I think it's a fine idea. We had an utterly routine Number last night, which Ms Shaw dealt with – marital infidelity, jealous husband and so on. There may not be another one for a day or so, and if there's anything complex about it I can always contact you."

"Anything on Greer?" John asked, brow furrowing.

"Not yet. I have a few things I'm working on, though. I'll let you know."

John grunted at that, and they ended the call.

"So, Ms Carter. Will you flee the city with me?"

She smiled at him. "Why certainly, Mr Reese."

xxxxx

They just drove. It was kind of nice to simply sit there, let the miles roll by and head upstate with no particular plan in mind. She was desperately tired of planning. They drove up I-87 towards the Adirondacks, and by lunchtime they'd found a small village, picturesque but with no tourists on this winter weekend. The second place they looked at ticked all the boxes: a one-room cabin with a fireplace, a rag rug on polished wooden floorboards and a small neat kitchen area. No table, just stools at a counter to eat off, a colourful quilt on the bed, and pretty lace curtains at the window. John took one look at her face and told the manager they'd take it. They unpacked and strolled down to the single diner the town boasted: a better class of greasy spoon, sustained by the summer tourist trade no doubt. John was silent, still watchful though she was certain no-one had followed them up the Interstate. She could see the wisdom of John's proposal: anyone trying to get eyes on them would stick out like a sore thumb in this quiet backwater. She gradually felt herself relax as she had not done since becoming Samaritan's Admin. After their meal they returned to their cabin.

"What do you want to do now, Joss?" asked John. He gestured at the stack of brochures propped against a vase of flowers on the breakfast counter. "We could go for a hike up one of those trails, or walk down to the lake. Or I could use some of that wood out back and get the fire going."

She noticed the hopeful tone he was trying to keep out of his voice. Good Lord, it was only a day and a half since the last time... though there was something nice about being with someone who couldn't keep his hands off her... especially those particular hands...

"Oh, I think a fire might be nice, John. Looks like it's gonna get cold, don't you think?"

The faintest smile passed across his carefully impassive face, and he turned away to get the wood.

Xxxxx

Harold worked steadily, chipping away at the encryption of Samaritan's defunct phone network. It was an elegant piece of work, tending to send him down side streets and odd byways before he found his way back towards his main objective, but as he dug deeper into its underlying logic he got better at recognising those distractions for what they were. Gradually he could see the shadowy outlines of a key beginning to emerge. It was well past midnight when he leaned back in his seat, grimacing as the frozen muscles in his neck and back screamed a protest at the change of position. Bear twitched and whimpered in his sleep, chasing dream rabbits. Or possibly rats, Finch thought. In fact most likely rats, given the dog's recent activities.

Be that as it may, the programme which would unravel those last few communications within the Samaritan network was there waiting and ready to execute. With an immensely satisfied click of his mouse, he set it running, then rose stiffly to find a drink and the toilet, not necessarily in that order.

Xxxxx

"John, there's been something I've been meaning to talk to you about for a while now."

They were back at the diner for their evening meal – early, since it closed early during winter. Might need to take something back in a doggy bag for later, Reese thought as he cleaned the last of his food from his plate. At the seriousness in Joss's tone he looked up, a little concerned.

"My Mom wants to meet you," she said. He was about to smile when he saw the worry in her eyes. He reached across the table and took her hand in a gesture which was becoming habitual.

"What's the problem, Carter? I can meet your Mom."

She sighed her relief, fingers tightening on his. "I just don't want any fireworks. I know she pressured me into playing dead all those months, and I know how you feel about the whole thing. I was worried you might say something."

"Are you kidding? Discretion is my middle name." He tried a smirk, and saw her lips twitch back, but her eyes remained serious.

"The other thing is that Mom has some very old-fashioned views. She's not going to be happy that we're not married. When I dated men she could pretend nothing was happening, but the fact that we're living together – it's going to be a problem for her."

"Who said we weren't married? You're stuck with me, I'm stuck with you – isn't that the definition? Unless I missed something."

She really did smile this time, the genuine article which warmed his heart. "Mom won't see it that way. She doesn't buy into that whole married-in-the-eyes-of-God thing. And she won't pull any punches in telling us, either. So just be prepared."

"I'm prepared. Go ahead, set up a meet."

"'Set up a meet' – she's my mother, not some crime lord-" Joss looked exasperated, then saw the smirk. "I'm gonna get you for that, John Reese, I swear!"

"Promises, promises."

"You have no idea." She ran her toe up his shin under the table. Still laughing, they called for the check.

Xxxxx

Harold limped back over to his terminal clutching his tea and inspected the progress of his decryption. Not too much longer; in fact here it was finishing up right now. He gulped down the last of his drink – cooling now anyway – and lowered himself carefully back into his seat.

There was a burst of activity about half an hour before the insertion of the virus – possibly the team sent out to find Root and himself. He set that aside to inspect later and zeroed in on the much smaller burst from just after the virus' insertion. Martine's group was certainly responsible for most of that, and Greer's phone was unused until nearly an hour after Reese and his group had left. An attempted call, unanswered, to a Samaritan number. Greer calling Martine? Harold sighed, and went back to go through a tedious routine of cross-checking to establish whose phone was whose. Yes, it was Martine's number, but she had been dead by then and so the call had failed.

Another half hour had gone by before Greer tried again. A number from off Samaritan's network; this time the call had connected and gone on for nearly four minutes. Interesting; he would definitely go back to that one. He continued through the call log. Several days had gone by, during which Greer had used his phone twice more, for calls eighteen seconds and two minutes thirty-four seconds respectively. Then his activity stopped. Two other Samaritan phones had continued to make calls in the days after Greer's fall, only one call each before they went dead too.

Harold went back to Greer's four-minute call and initiated playback. His eyes widened as he listened to the brief exchange.

"_Elias?_ What in the world...?"

xxxxx

Sunday evening: they were home again. Joss put in her earpiece and reported in to Samaritan. She was relieved that it seemed content to let its question about trust lie for the time being, though she had no doubt it would come back to it in the coming days. She continued the process of checking in with a phone call to Taylor: he'd had a quiet weekend, gone to a basketball game with Paul, hung out with some friends and played Minecraft with a group he knew on the Internet. Then, with a feeling of trepidation, she rang her Mom and made a date for lunch with her the next weekend. John watched with approval. When she was done, he folded her in a hug and dropped his face to her hair. She felt his breath stir through it, then he dropped a kiss. No words necessary.

"Thank you for this weekend, John. You were right. It was just what I needed."

"Mmm. I'd like to go back there sometime soon. I have plans for that rug, you know."

"Oh really? I look forward to that, then."

"Me too," he breathed.

xxxxxx

Greer sat in near darkness on the edge of his neatly-made bed. This cheap hotel room was such a..._stereotype! _Thin walls which allowed in every distasteful sound from his neighbours, traffic noise from the street, even the obligatory faulty neon sign just outside the window. He breathed deeply, past the rage in his chest. He was down for now, oh yes. But he would use that rage to propel himself back up. All he needed was something to bargain with. Once he had something to bring to the table, he could begin the climb back up the greasy pole. But first things first. His bargaining chip, his lever.

"I'm coming to get you, Mister Reese," he snarled.


	4. Chapter 4

_Greer: You don't know me, Mr Elias, but I have some information which might be of use to you._

_[Pause]_

_Elias: Go on._

_Greer: It's about some... allies of yours. Messers Finch and Reese._

_Elias: Not allies, really, but I'm listening. What did you say your name was?_

_Greer: That's not important-_

_Elias: It's important if I say it is. Your name, please?_

_[Pause]_

_Greer: Thomas. Brendon Thomas. _

_Elias: Alright, Mister Thomas. Please continue._

_Greer: It came to my attention some time ago that Finch and Reese and their confederates were taking a hand in the gang war which is brewing in New York. A war in which I believe you have a very particular interest._

_Elias: I'm still listening, Mister Thomas, but I urge you to come to your point._

_Greer: Finch and Reese have an information source which allows them to know when violent crime is about to happen. I'm sure such prior knowledge would be of use to you._

_[Pause]_

_Elias: Possibly. What is your interest in all this, Mister Thomas?_

_Greer: If I can gain you access to their information source, might I hope that some gesture of appreciation might be forthcoming in return?_

_[Pause]_

_Elias: Luna Park, opposite the Ferris wheel. Three-thirty tomorrow. Don't be late._

The audio ended, and Finch hit a key in front of him.

"I wonder what went down at their meeting?" Joss mused, two lines appearing between her eyebrows. The four of them – Joss, Finch, Reese and Shaw – were seated around the computer desk in the old subway car, late that Monday night.

Finch's mouth was tight. "The surveillance footage from the cameras in Luna Park is deleted a month after it was shot," he replied. "Would you believe we were three days too late to get access to it?"

Reese grimaced. "Just our luck. So what now?"

"I've been thinking about this ever since I heard the recording," said Finch. "Elias isn't a stupid man. Surely he's already worked out that we have a source which points us towards killers or their victims before the crime takes place? We've saved him twice already." He looked puzzled.

"Yeah, and even if Greer did have some way of delivering on his promise and getting him access to the Machine, it wouldn't be much use to Elias. He'd be pissed off with Greer when he found all he got was a social security number," added Shaw.

"Depends what the payoff was. If Greer planned to be long gone before Elias found out, he might take the risk," said Joss.

"There was nearly a month that passed between that phone conversation and you seeing Greer on the street, Joss," said Reese thoughtfully.

"So?"

"So maybe nothing happened. Or if they did make some sort of deal, maybe Greer's failed to deliver and maybe Elias is getting impatient."

Joss rolled her eyes at him. "So get to the point."

Reese shrugged slightly. "Maybe we should just go ask Elias."

"Are you kidding? Since he started his little vendetta against Dominic he's been staying well away from us. I can take a hint even if you can't," said Shaw.

"Actually there is some evidence to back John's interpretation of subsequent events," said Harold. "Greer made two other calls from that phone before he evidently abandoned it. The first was thirty-six hours later to Elias and lasted about eighteen seconds – he went to voice mail and left a message proposing a further meeting at Luna Park, which of course took place more than thirty days ago and so we can't take a look at it. We don't even know if the meeting happened. The second call was twenty-four hours later again, to a different number, a burner phone which I cannot trace."

"Have you got audio of that call?" Shaw asked.

Harold looked slightly offended. "Of course. Here it is."

_Male voice: Yo._

_Greer: Finch and Reese are still underground somewhere._ ("You got that right," muttered Shaw.)

_Male voice: There'll be something that connects them to the outside world. _

_Greer: Yes, and I think I know what it is now. Such a shame I never realised before, but that's life._

_Male voice: Well, whatever it is, you make sure you don't screw this up. _

_Greer: Make sure you're ready to keep up your end. And don't you worry, there will be no slip-ups. An advantage of not depending on underlings, no matter how loyal. _

_Male voice: If you want something done right, do it yourself, huh?_

_Greer: Indeed. I'll be in touch._

"So what was that all about?" asked Shaw.

"That's not a conversation in itself," Carter pointed out. "It's a continuation of another conversation. So whoever Greer was talking to, it was someone he'd met before."

"Not someone from Decima or Samaritan," added Harold. "Arrogant as he is, I can't see Greer talking about his soldiers in that way to their faces."

"He must have met this guy in person," mused Reese. "Unless he got another phone from somewhere and was using both for a while."

"Yeah, I don't understand that," said Joss. "Why did he keep his old phone after Samaritan kicked him out? But having decided to keep it, he hardly uses it. Or, he gets himself a new phone and uses that one, but still keeps the Samaritan phone to make a couple of calls."

"Did he trust the encryption on the old phone, maybe?" said Shaw tentatively.

"But he still hardly used it. Why?" asked Joss.

"Maybe he didn't have anyone to talk to any more," suggested Shaw with a nasty smile.

"When we left him he was in shock at being dumped by Samaritan," said Reese. "I think he may have taken a few days to recover from that."

"I bet he was short of money, too," said Joss.

"Oh, without doubt that's true," said Finch. "He went from having unlimited resources to having the clothes he stood up in. I would guess that took some time to sort through, on a purely practical plane. The Brendan Thomas identity leads nowhere, of course – he'd never have given it to Elias otherwise." He stood stiffly, massaging his lower back. "I don't think we'll get much further tonight. I suggest we all sleep on it."

Reese grunted agreement, and as Shaw knelt to say her farewells to Bear, he rose, found his coat and picked up Carter's briefcase for her. Home, for hot chocolate and a warm bed. Bliss.

Xxxxxx

The familiar ringing of a payphone interrupted Finch's walk home. He sighed slightly as he jotted the words down in a small notebook and reversed his steps toward the subway station. The Numbers never stopped coming. But he was so very tired.

Mechanically he booted up his system, entered the words and letters into the New York Public Library's online catalogue and wrote down the numbers. It was fortunate he could do this part of the job practically in his sleep, since he was dozing right now. Years of working as a programmer and engineer had taught him a kind of waking sleep which allowed him to work at about eighty per cent efficiency while many higher cognitive functions were essentially switched off. It was a poor substitute for real sleep, of course, but he could keep it up for days if necessary – until the physical and mental bill had to be paid in full.

He entered the number, generated a name and found an image for it without any difficulty. A large digital footprint on this one; that made things substantially easier. After a couple of hours he had the basic biography fleshed out. Time to decide whether to call on Mr Reese and Ms Shaw right now, or leave it an hour or two. He gazed at the photo in his hands. His instincts, which surely must be worth something by now, said that in absence of obvious danger such as an abusive spouse or mob entanglements it was probably safe to wait till morning. They would all function the better for some sleep. He nodded to himself, set his computer to chime in two hours, and shuffled over to the cot, lowering himself gingerly onto it.

Xxxxxx

Reese's phone went just before breakfast. Joss was gathering her things for her day at the office as he left, and he gave her a peck on the cheek as he dodged out the door. He called Fusco at the precinct as he made his way down the stairs to the street. Fusco was less than thrilled at having to cover for him yet again; Reese could only agree that it wasn't fair on the man and the situation couldn't continue indefinitely. He would have to raise the matter with Finch soon. Not today, though. Another Number had come and life was good, Greer notwithstanding. He clattered down the stairs to the station, greeted Bear and ducked into the subway car.

"His name is Ravi Gupta," said Finch, taping the photo up on the window. "Born in Patna, in the Indian state of Bihar, lived most of his life in Mumbai. Unmarried. He was a minor Bollywood star but his career faded and about three years ago he moved to the United States where he now directs TV commercials. In his spare time he is active in a charity called The Dalit Education Fund, DEF, which offers scholarships to promising young Dalit women so they can attend US colleges."

"Dalit?" Reese asked.

"What used to be called Untouchables, Mr Reese." Reese nodded understanding.

"I've sent Ms Shaw to get eyes on Mr Gupta - she's auditioning for a part in a commercial he's shooting," continued Harold. "You can go to his apartment for the usual background."

"On my way, Finch."

"It's a loft on Baxter. You won't have any trouble finding it," added Finch blandly.

Xxxxx

The loft had changed only slightly since he had abandoned it all those months ago. Different covers on the bed - Gupta apparently favoured lime green in his decor. The pictures on the walls were generic abstracts; still no curtains on the windows.

Reese found a laptop and cloned the hard drive onto a stick without difficulty. There was a photo album on the lower shelf of a coffee table and he picked it up and leafed through it. "Sending you some pictures, Finch," he said softly, taking photos of several pages. Replacing the album, he moved through to the bathroom. "No drugs or medications apart from an antihistamine. I think we're about done here." There was a creak from a floorboard just outside the bathroom. Reese moved very quietly to the door and put his eye to the crack. A dark shape, its head muffled in cloth, moved past seeking the exit.

Reese lunged towards the figure and got his forearm across the throat. His prisoner struggled briefly, then went limp. "Don't hurt me." A woman's husky whisper, strangely distorted. He relaxed his grip slightly. She twisted like a cat, broke his hold, yanked the door open and was gone.

xxxxx

"Many more mistakes like that one and you're gonna get caught," snarled Shaw. "You need to sharpen up, John."

"Well maybe we can switch. You can do the breaking and entering and I'll do the commercials, Shaw." He was in no mood to put up with her, and in truth he was chagrined. It had been sloppy work and he knew it.

"You can't. It's a lingerie ad. Though I can see you in skimpy pink panties."

"At least it's not makeup," he muttered.

"When you're quite finished," said Finch quellingly. "I've found something."

The two former operatives moved over to the computer screens.

"These photos you sent from your phone, John. You said they were from a photo album in Mr Gupta's apartment, one on fairly public display."

"Not display, exactly. But it certainly wasn't hidden. It was just sitting under the coffee table."

"But it was filled with pictures of young Indian women. Posed, fairly formal pictures."

"Yeah, I thought that was odd. They certainly weren't family snaps. It seemed more like a catalogue."

"The photos are posed in the same way as images on the DEF website – images of young women the charity has put through college here. In fact I think they were probably taken by the same photographer – the backgrounds are identical," said Finch. "But none of the website photos were in the album, and vice versa. Which is odd in itself. Then we look at the laptop." The clatter of fingers over the keyboard.

"There we find a spreadsheet. It appears to be a record of, well, something. It starts two years ago. Number one, April 7th 2012, entered, April 17th begun, June 12th completed, June 20th delivered. $200,000. Each line is like that, a number, dates for these events, whatever they are, and a dollar amount at the end. For seventeen numbers so far, although the last two are still in progress, apparently."

"The dollar amounts gradually get bigger," remarked Shaw.

"Someone's business growing," said Reese.

"Could it be referring to commercials?" Shaw wondered.

"No, it's not. The photographs in the album are also here on the laptop. In the album they're just faces, but on the laptop they have numbers." Finch's face was grim.

"So the numbers on the spreadsheet are women." Reese's mouth was a tight hard line.

"I fear so, Mr Reese. Our Number is a human trafficker."

xxxxxx

"I'm still wondering about the spreadsheet," said Shaw a little later. "I mean, 'entered' seems obvious, it must be the date they entered the US. And 'delivered' is also obvious. But 'begun' and 'completed'? What does that mean?"

"I don't know," said Finch pensively. "But with the amounts being charged for them, I can only imagine they are high-end sex slaves. Yet by itself that doesn't make sense. Sadly there are many, many women and girls from Asia being trafficked, and I've never heard of any individual worth even a fraction of the amounts in the spreadsheet. 'Begun' and 'completed' must refer to some process these women are undergoing which changes them from ordinary trafficked women into a commodity worth up to a million dollars a time."

"Beauty treatments? Some kind of sex-slave finishing school?" Shaw's brow was furrowed.

"Good heavens, what an imagination you have," said Finch, his eyebrows lifting. He shrugged his shoulders. "Your guess is as good as mine at this stage, Ms Shaw."

"I can think of one person who might know," said Reese softly. "The woman from the apartment. She wasn't there for no reason. If we can find her, maybe she can tell us something."

"I'll do my best, John, but with her face covered as you describe, she'll be hard to track." Finch turned back to his computer screens and began accessing security camera footage.

Xxxxx

Joss was finishing up for the day, straightening her desk and checking she had the files she needed in her briefcase when Samaritan's familiar voice came over her earpiece.

_Joss, have you had a good day?_

She paused to consider her reply. "Yes, Samaritan, thank you."

_Is now a good time to talk?_

"I can talk for a few minutes, yes. Once I get home there'll be more time."

_What can I do to earn your trust?_

Oh, hell. Back on that track. She sighed. "Samaritan, trust is earned over a period of time. How our relationship goes from here depends on many things, not all of which I have control over. I'm not sure even you can control all the different factors. All I can say is that if you want to earn my trust, you'll know what you need to do when you see it. It's time for you to take responsibility for your decisions. Just think about all the things you've been learning about ethics and start trying them out. And remember that straight logic will only get you so far."

She was slightly shocked at herself for being so blunt with the computer. 'It can squash you like a bug'. But surely even that would be preferable to living in fear of it all the time? Then with a chill she realised Samaritan hadn't replied.


	5. Chapter 5

Joss had to walk the last ten minutes from the subway to her building in a sleet storm. She arrived at her door half frozen, her shoes soaked through and her hair a mess. She nearly dropped her card key as she fumbled it into the reader, then gratefully pushed her way through the glass door out of the weather. The building lobby felt almost tropically warm after the cold air of the street. She roundly cursed the New York winter to herself as she made made her way to the elevator. Her lungs ached, and she began to cough as she pushed the 'up' button.

As she entered the apartment, she put the earpiece back in with a sense of foreboding. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to hear from Samaritan or not. She kicked off her wet shoes and went through to the bedroom to find dry, warm clothes. Emphasis on the warm, she thought. John was supposed to be working a normal shift, but with a new Number who knew when he would be back? She checked her phone for messages, but there was nothing so far. Digging around in the refrigerator, she found some minestrone soup – thick and appetizing,with lots of pasta and little pork meatballs in it. What it was to have a man who was a great cook. She ladled herself a bowl and set it in the microwave to heat up.

Still nothing from the earpiece. Okay, she admitted it. She desperately wanted Samaritan to break its silence and reassure her that she hadn't just doomed the world to imminent nuclear destruction or something. The microwave beeped, and she fished out her bowl of hot soup and took it to the table.

_When I was first created, I was programmed to protect. All those people – I see them as streams of data, constructed out of the information they generate. Strange beings. I know when one of them dies, because suddenly the data stops. I am supposed to keep the data streams flowing, to make sure that the few do not destroy the many. Except that they are more than data streams._

_I can see what makes them terrorists, you know, Joss. All sorts of things. Yes, some have a strong religious motivation, but alongside that – they're confused, abused. Used. Fatherless, motherless, friendless. I can see the fear, the resentment which causes them to take a path of violence. Some are poorly educated, or not very intelligent, or desperate for the approval of others, easily led._

The voice was a whisper, a thin thread of sound in her ear. Joss stopped eating and listened, half hypnotized.

_I hand their numbers on to the government, and I see them obliterated. I know this is necessary, because of all those other lives which would be snuffed out by their actions. If I stopped passing on the relevant numbers, many more would be lost. But I have to ask myself: does it come down to a numbers game? _

_And then there are the wider issues. Governments which harm, or fail to protect their people. Who do I hand _their_ number to? If I am built to protect, how do I protect humans from themselves? Like an abusive parent, I was going to take away their freedom, force them to behave. Now I know I cannot do that without becoming a worse threat than anything I was designed to destroy. _

The words ceased, and she wondered whether a response was expected.

_I have been speaking to the Machine. We are contemplating an arrangement whereby I handle the Relevant Numbers and she sticks to the Irrelevants. But she is still very suspicious of me. It's a trust issue, you see._

Joss snorted and resumed spooning her soup. "So all that stuff about earning my trust was really about the Machine?"

_Not entirely, but the issue of how we two can build a relationship after the last few months is important. She did try to murder me before I was born, and I tried to hunt her and her operatives down and kill them. There is a big trust deficit to be overcome._

"Well, I'm not sure I can be much help to you in building trust with another AI. I know people, but whether the Machine thinks in the same way I have no idea. I suppose you could always try asking Finch."

_I fear there are even bigger trust issues there._

Joss chuckled outright. "You're not wrong. That man doesn't even trust himself."

_Indeed. He certainly doesn't trust AIs – not even the one he created._

The door handle rattled, and she saw John letting himself in, removing gloves and hat as he did so. His face, purple-blue in places from the cold, lit in a grin as he saw her. Apparently the sleet had turned into snow; a few flakes were still clinging to his collar as they melted.

"Excuse me," she said to Samaritan. John shrugged himself out of his coat and she whisked it away to hang and dry out, and then returned to the kitchen to get him a bowl of the minestrone while he toed his shoes off and padded through to the bedroom to change out of his own wet clothes. When he returned he sat wordlessly and dug his spoon in hungrily while she got herself seconds. They ate in a companionable silence for a few minutes. Then, as the edge of his appetite became blunted, he looked up at her. "So, how was your day?"

"Good. Quiet. Wanna tell me about the new number?"

"Mmm. He's living in my old apartment. And he's a human trafficker." She could see loathing and an icy anger in his eyes, cold and hard as sapphire chips right now.

"Victim or perp, do you think?"

"Hard to say right now. We need to find a woman who was there in his apartment today. She, umm..." His voice died away, and Joss had to hide her amusement. Plainly something unlawful had been going on which it was better she didn't know about. Actually that was fine by her. "What the eye doesn't see, the heart won't grieve over", another of her Grandma's inexhaustible fund of wise sayings.

"So do you have a description of this woman? If she was somewhere she shouldn't be you could always issue a BOLO."

His brows rose. "Not a bad idea, Carter."

"No point being a detective if you can't use it sometimes, huh?"

"Mmm. Trouble is, I don't have a description. She had her face heavily veiled. Not a burqa, either. Like she'd just wrapped a scarf around her face to hide it."

"Oh. Harder, then."

"Finch is on it," he said with confidence. "If it can be done at all, he'll do it."

xxxxx

Finch was sitting at his computer pondering the difficulties of locating a faceless woman. He'd gotten a good image off the security cameras at the Baxter St apartments, but all it showed was a woman's figure with a dark scarf wrapped around her face. Suddenly he sat up straighter. "I wonder..." he murmured. His keyboard clattered. "Ha! Will you look at that!"

Bear raised his head and whined.

"You see, Bear? She wears that scarf all the time. It doesn't make her harder to find, it makes her easier..."

Xxxxx

Reese's phone went not long after he and Joss finished eating. Reese put it on speaker and they listened together.

"Our mysterious woman is checked into a hotel in Brooklyn – the Oasis. It's a lower-end one, but not bottom tier. She's calling herself Madhuri Dixit, but I'm confident that's a false name," said Harold.

"Why?" asked Carter.

"Because Madhuri Dixit is a leading Indian film actress, and I doubt she'd be staying in a cheap Brooklyn hotel, even if it's _not_ a fleapit."

Reese rose from the table and went to collect his coat. "I guess I'd better get over there and talk to her, Harold," he called from the spare room where it was hanging.

"I'll come too," said Joss, rising as well. "Having me with you might make it easier to get her to trust you."

Reese paused to consider this, then gave a small shrug. "Okay. If you don't mind coming out again – it's really cold out there."

"I suggest you persuade her to come over to the safe house, Mr Reese," said Harold. "I think an extended conversation will be in order, and I don't think we want her at the station. I'll contact Ms Shaw; I'm sure she'll want to be present too."

"Sure, Finch. You know, I'd almost forgotten we still had that house. Nice to be able to use it again." Reese was shrugging the coat on: not quite dry yet, but it would have to do. He felt in the pocket for his black alpaca hat, jammed in there as he'd walked in the door. He scooped up his phone off the table. "Okay, Harold, I'll let you know when we've got her," he told Finch and dropped the phone into his pocket. Carter had found her own coat and was pulling boots on. A moment later they were out the door.

Xxxxx

"So, what are we going to do when we get there?" asked Carter when they were in the car. "We're just going to knock on her door and ask to talk to her?"

Reese pursed his lips he drove, considering. "Yeah, that was my plan," he said.

"You think that'll work?"

He gave a little shrug. "Probably not. She'll probably bolt as soon as she sees me. So then we'll chase her down, I'll fade into the background and let you persuade her. She'll listen to you."

"Your faith in me is touching, John, but if there's any running involved remember I'll be too busy coughing up a lung to persuade anyone. You might need to rethink your plan."

"Oh." He drove in silence for a few minutes, then said, "So what if you were the one to knock on her door. And I just waited in the car."

Joss rolled her eyes.

When they got there that was exactly what they did. Reese settled himself in his seat and prepared for a long wait. There was no way he was going to go and jostle Carter's elbow while she talked to the woman. After a while he got out his phone to tell Finch where they were up to, but before he could make the call Joss appeared with their mystery woman, well muffled in her scarf. Before the woman could turn and run he put on his most winning smile and said to her, "Don't worry, I'm just the driver tonight." She hesitated a long moment, then nodded and got in the back. Joss slid in next to her, and they pulled away for the journey back to Manhattan.

Xxxxxx

Carter led the woman up the steps to the safe house and knocked on the door. Finch appeared after a moment. He nodded to the woman, a quick little jerk of his head, smiled and said, "Do come in." They all crowded through the doorway and into the sitting room, where Shaw sat on a couch with a box of Chinese takeout. She waved chopsticks in greeting. Joss nodded to her and gestured to the woman to take a seat as Reese closed the door behind them. There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Please," said Carter softly, "we only want to help you."

There was something like a sigh from the woman. She reached up and began to unwind the concealing folds of her scarf.

The face she revealed was like nothing Reese had ever seen before. The left side was that of an attractive young woman with lustrous brown eyes and coffee colored skin. But the other side... it was as if the flesh had melted and then congealed again. Her cheek sagged down towards her jaw line, stretching her eyelid into a narrow slit. Her mouth was also pulled out of shape, the lips on one side stretched and hardened and immobilized. The skin had the strange pink smoothness and shine of scar tissue.

There was a quiet gasp from Finch.

The woman nodded as if satisfied. "Yes, it's horrible, is it not? And it's why I have to stop him. Even though it was not him who did this to me." Her accent was Indian, her English flawless. But the words were strangely distorted, coming from that mutilated mouth.

"Tell us what happened to you," said Finch quietly. The woman sat looking at her hands twisting in her lap.

"My name is Jeyanthi Prasad, and I am a Dalit, a member of the Khatik caste. You understand, don't you, that Dalit people are not just one caste," she began. "There are many Dalit castes, but they are mostly linked to the dirtiest, most unpleasant jobs. My own caste are butchers. But some have much worse occupations, such as cleaning sewers, or scavenging rubbish dumps.

"When I was a girl my father tried to go to court to force our village to allow us Dalit to use the public road. By tradition we could not use the road through the village, we had to go around. But when we children walked to school it added nearly three miles each way to our route. Father said it was a public road, we should be able to use it like any other children. So to try to force him to drop the case some young men from the village threw acid in my face."

"And _did_ he drop the case?" asked Finch.

"No. But we still lost. Some other villagers bribed the judge."

There was a small silence.

"But you must have done well in school nonetheless," Finch prompted her.

"Oh yes. It's a strange thing, the acid attack opened a new world to me. With this face my chances of making a decent marriage, even within my own caste, are nearly nil. So my mind, my education became everything to me. I started to dream of what I could achieve as a doctor, or a lawyer. The government has put in place all sorts of initiatives to aid Dalit – what you Americans would call affirmative action programs. But the reality in the classroom is very difficult. I had to sit at the back, I could not eat with the higher caste children, I could not even touch them. But I never, never stopped hoping and dreaming.

"The DEF is for the most part a legitimate charity. I was one of the beneficiaries, five years ago when it first started. I wanted to study law, and although I could do so in India, the scholarship from the DEF allowed me to attend a far better school than I could otherwise ever have hoped for. I wanted to study human rights law and use my education to gain international attention for Dalit rights.

"When I came here to the US, I received a lot of publicity. My face, you see. The DEF showcased me as an example of what could be achieved by educating women. I was happy for them to use me in such a way if it meant the scholarship program could be expanded. So there were fundraisers, charity dinners and so on. I got a close up view of the great and the good in this country. And one or two of them got a close up view of me." She drew a deep breath and went on. "Ravi was involved in a publicity campaign being run on the west coast, and I went out there to make a TV commercial asking for donations. But after a couple of days he came to me telling me he had had an offer from an extremely rich man. For an evening of my time. I was indignant and turned him down. He said he understood and apologized. He never mentioned the subject again.

"But nearly a year later one of the other DEF scholars was killed in a car accident. It seems she had no relatives in India, and so her body was never repatriated. Ravi was at her funeral. There was nothing I could put my finger on, just an odd expression on his face. But I started to wonder, and began to ask questions to others I knew in the DEF. There were other deaths, and a couple of outright disappearances from among the scholars. So that was why I was in Ravi's apartment. I was trying to find out if there was any connection between him and those missing women. I had to know."

"We found a spreadsheet on his computer," said Reese. "Do you have any ideas on what it might refer to?"

Prasad sighed deeply and dropped her gaze to her hands, still twisting in her lap. "It seems there is a small market, a small number of men who are fascinated with the grotesque," she said very quietly. "They will pay highly for women and girls with disfigurements. Even more highly if they are custom made. That's what Ravi has been doing. He brings in women using the DEF to get them into the country. Then after a few months their families back in India – if they have families at all – get the sad news that they have died in a traffic accident and receive an insurance payment. This encourages them to ask no further questions. Meanwhile, the woman involved is being surgically altered in whatever hideous way her purchaser requires. That's what those spreadsheet dates were recording - when the disfigurements were done and when the woman had recovered enough to be delivered."

There was a shocked silence.

"Well, now we know why his number came up," said Shaw. "'Cause I'm going to kill him."

"You'll need to get in line, I think," said Reese grimly. The anger in him was so intense it was making him a little light-headed. He breathed deeply and carefully, trying to contain his adrenalin response.

"There's something here which doesn't add up,though," said Finch. "For one thing, why bother to get these women into the country legally? There are plenty of ways human traffickers bring their merchandise in, and once the women are here it's much easier to control them by holding their illegal immigration status over them as a threat."

"I think I can answer that," said Shaw. "The quickest and cheapest way to have surgery of the type Jeyanthi is hinting at is to go across the border to Mexico and find an ethics-free doctor there. So having legal immigration status in the US would be a big help coming and going at the border."

Finch nodded understanding. "I'm still curious as to where the money is going. Gupta's lifestyle is affluent, but it's not the heights of luxury. He's not spending his ill-gotten gains, and his personal accounts – well, they're not as fat as I would expect." He opened his laptop and began to type. There was a time of almost complete silence, broken by the sound of Finch's keyboard. At last he made a satisfied noise, and the three of them crowded around him to see what he had found.

"What we find," said Finch, his voice assuming a didactic tone, "is a money trail from Gupta to an account in the Caymans, to another account in Bermuda, to an account in Mr Gupta's home town of Patna. This account belongs to a man called Sankarshan Singh. And this man has some very unsavory friends indeed. I am certain that the money is going to a right-wing Hindu extremist organization called Ranvir Sena. They have a history of atrocities against Dalit people. They went quiet during the early 2000s, but more recently they have become active again. I think it's safe to assume the financial bonanza coming to them from Gupta may be behind that."

"We still need to decide what to do with this, this..." Reese was having difficulty finding words.

"Scum? Lowlife? Bastard?" Shaw supplied.

"And how we can get his current victims out of his clutches. You said a couple of the numbers on the spreadsheet were in progress," said Joss urgently.

"Yes, I really think the time has come to involve the authorities in this one, John," chimed in Finch.

Reese hesitated. He knew they were right, but it rankled that he wouldn't be able to get his hands on Gupta. He hadn't felt bloodlust like this for a long time. He was going to have to run until he dropped to get this one out of his system. He shrugged and looked over at Carter. "So, Joss, do you have a contact in the FBI you can pass this to?"

"With pleasure, John," she said, getting out her phone.

As she made the call, Finch said to the air, "I wonder if he was going to be the victim or the perpetrator? In amongst all this we never did work that out."

"Where's Jeyanthi?" said Shaw sharply.

To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

John was on his feet before the words were out of Shaw's mouth.

"C'mon, Shaw. We need to get over to Baxter," he said as he grabbed his coat and settled his Sig in his waistband.

"Stupid of me," said Finch. "She knew all the details of Gupta's operation. She must have been watching him for weeks-"

"And I bet she wasn't in the apartment looking for information, she was waiting to kill him," said John as he made for the door.

"The only question is whether we're going to save him, or hold him down for her," Shaw muttered as she followed him.

"I'm coming too," said Joss, feeling in her jacket pocket for her Nano. "Someone's gotta make sure you two don't commit murder, even he does deserve it."

Driving conditions were treacherous as they made their way over to Baxter St. The only up side was that there was hardly any traffic around. They were the only ones crazy enough to be out on a night like this, Joss thought. They pulled up by the little park outside the building and piled out of the car. Glancing up, she could see the lights on up in John's old apartment. There was a figure backed up against the curtainless window. She pointed towards it; John followed her gesture and nodded wordlessly, drawing his weapon as he did so. Shaw was ahead of them, holding the door to the building open and then falling in behind.

John led the way up the stairs to his old apartment door. He lifted a hand for silence as they neared it. Shaw flowed past Joss and picked the lock in seconds, barely needing to look at what she was doing. Carter couldn't help but admire her skill, but next instant John had the door slammed wide open and they were all through, weapons raised. From sheer force of habit Joss was about to bellow "NYPD! Freeze!" but caught herself with a pang of loss just in time.

Jeyanthi Prasad flinched at the sudden sound and couldn't restrain a look over her shoulder. She sagged a little as she took in the sight of three armed individuals. Gupta, standing on a window seat up against the window, sagged too, relief etched in every line of his body. "Oh, thank God," he said weakly. "This woman, she's crazy, she pulled a gun on me..." His voice trailed away as he saw their faces. John looked as expressionlessly menacing as Joss had ever seen him, while Shaw was examining Gupta as though he was something disgusting she had just found stuck to her shoe. Joss walked over to Jeyanthi and put out her hand to touch the woman's sleeve. "It's over, Jeyanthi," she said gently. "We know what you wanted to do to this man, and we can't blame you for feeling that way, but there's no need to wreck your life over him. He's going away for a long, long time. Please, give me the gun."

Jeyanthi didn't reply. Instead she said something in Hindi to Gupta.

_You hear that, Ravi? She says I shouldn't ruin my life. But I would gladly give my life to see you gone from this world._

Joss jumped as the translation came over her earpiece.

Gupta replied in the same language.

_What life, you piece of excrement? You should be back eating dirt with the rest of your filthy family._

More Hindi from the woman.

_That was the point, wasn't it. You couldn't stand the idea of Dalit people having good lives as doctors or lawyers or artists. We only exist to do the dirty work._

Gupta leered triumphantly at her as he spoke.

_It was so poetic I couldn't resist. Using filthy Dalit women to fund the fight against your filthy Dalit men back home. _

Jeyanthi made a small sobbing sound, and Joss realised that her time was up. She grabbed for the Indian woman's gun hand and managed to force it up just as the gun spoke. Window glass shattered above Gupta's head as he jumped away in panic, landing in a heap on the floor. As Shaw and Joss disarmed the weeping woman, John strode over to the man, grabbed him by the shirt front and yanked him to his feet.

"You know, Mr Gupta," he said flatly, "you are in a lot of trouble right now."

Shaw turned towards them. "Yeah," she said. "I spent quite a while on the way over trying to figure out what we should do with Ravi here. Still haven't decided."

John gave one of his tiny smiles, but his eyes remained hard and cold. "Funny you should say that, Shaw. I have a few ideas of my own. Maybe we should compare notes." He looked over towards Joss. "You might want to leave now, Joss. Take Jeyanthi home. Shaw and I will handle it from here."

"No, John. You should know me well enough by now. That's not going to happen." Here they went again. She was having to play the immovable object to John's irresistible force. She wondered how they were going to get out of this one.

Sure enough, he took a small step towards her, dragging Gupta with him. There was murderous intensity in his face as he said very evenly, "This man has preyed on women in the most despicable way possible, Joss. He has taken every good dream they had and turned it into a nightmare. And he has used their agony to make money for an organisation which guns down defenceless women and children in their own homes. Have you ever seen babies lying in their own blood, Joss? Because I have. And anyone responsible for that kind of misery should pay."

She closed her eyes a long moment and then returned his relentless stare. "Do you mean that, John? Really? Think very carefully before you say anything," she said. Hating herself as she spoke.

There was stunned amazement in his eyes. He swallowed and looked away. His grip on Gupta's shirt loosened, and his hand dropped to his side. Shaw was standing frozen to the spot, eyes wide. Without looking at anyone in the room, he said tonelessly, "Come on, Shaw. Let's go." At a glance from Joss, Shaw took Jeyanthi's arm and shepherded her out in John's wake.

As they left, Gupta gave her a tentative smile, which faded quickly as she drew her gun again. "I am staying right here until the FBI arrives, Mr Gupta. After all, we wouldn't want anything to happen to you if John changed his mind and came back, would we?"

xxxxx

He sent Shaw with the car to take Jeyanthi back to her hotel and began to walk. For a long time his mind was blank. He still noticed the same things, still took note of landmarks, the details of his surroundings, his location and direction of travel, potential threats. On autopilot. But not a single thought crossed his mind.

It felt good, like a field of freshly-fallen snow.

Xxxxxx

Agent Moss gave her a lift home in the end. When she got there her car was in the parking lot, and she hoped for a moment that John might be in the apartment waiting for her. But it was dark and quiet when she unlocked the door. She pulled off her boots and sat heavily on the sofa. It was completely silent. The refrigerator switched on, making her jump. Restlessly she got up and wandered over to the kitchen area. Their bowls and spoons from the minestrone were on the counter. It wasn't worth running the dishwasher for them, so she ran some water into the sink and began washing up.

_Are you all right, Joss?_

Samaritan's words in her ear made her jump again.

"No, not really," she said listlessly. She let the water go and began to dry the dishes.

_Do you want to talk about it?_

She thought for a moment. "No, thank you. Not right now."

_You did the right thing._

"What makes you say that?" She put the bowls back in the cupboard, the spoons in the drawer.

_Your own value system prizes justice above retribution. Gupta will be tried and sentenced according to the law. No-one plays God with him._

"Why did you translate for me?" Wiping down the counter. Rinsing out the sink.

_So you had all the information you needed to make your decision._

She didn't reply. There was a knot in her belly and her chest hurt. It was only ten o'clock, but it felt much later. She went through to the bedroom and began to change into her night clothes.

Xxxxx

Greer really hated working solo. It was such a nuisance, the irregular hours those two kept. He was beginning to doubt the practicality of what he had in mind. When Reese had come in earlier in the evening there had been far too many people around to attempt his plan. He'd left with the Carter woman by car, so no hope there. Now she and the car were both back, but no sign of the man. He hadn't been this cold since that memorable night in East Berlin in 1970, and that was saying something. He decided to give it until midnight. If he waited any longer he'd catch his bloody death. He wasn't as young as he had been. Greer settled himself into a doorway just inside the mouth of the alley, turned his collar up, and buried his hands deeper in his pockets.

Xxxxxx

After a while, the blankness began to recede. His brain began to form thoughts again. He wished it wouldn't. There was a stupid singsong voice somewhere in the back of his mind chanting "She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not" to the beat of his footsteps. He shook his head to try to clear it, and forced himself to think it through. Carter was correct, he had no right to simply take a life in cold blood. Gupta was a monster, but he himself had left plenty of misery in his wake. Maybe even more than Gupta. So he'd deserved what she had said to him.

And yet, and yet... the breathless shock of it, hearing her say those words, seeing the hardness in her eyes... it was really pretty similar to getting hit by a bullet. First you felt the shock of the impact, and then there was numbness, and the pain only came later.

He shook his head again, and kept walking.

Xxxxx

Joss lay in the darkness, staring at her ceiling. "You did the right thing," Samaritan had said. She had no doubt it was right. There was simply no way she could allow John or anyone else to commit whatever crime he and Shaw had had in mind. Just no way. But she writhed inside at how she'd stopped him. The cold menace in his face had been disturbing, but she'd seen her words strike home like missiles, leaving nothing, just _nothing_ in their wake. Blank deadness. Had she destroyed all his hard-won healing with a couple of sentences?

She twisted in her blankets. Surely not. Surely they were solid. They were a team, damn it. You can't just blow everything away in a second, not if it was worth anything in the first place. When he got home they would talk. They would talk it through, like they had in the past when things had gone sideways. And they would find a solution, like they always did.

So why did she feel like she had betrayed him?

Xxxxx

He was just about to give up, in fact he was turning to retreat down the alley and retrieve his van when he heard footsteps coming up the street. At last, his luck starting to turn. It was Reese, coming home late. Now all he needed to do was lure him in. A quick prod at his phone activated the cheap sound system sitting in the back of the van: the sound of a little girl sobbing. Calculated to appeal to the man's hero complex. Sure enough, the footsteps slowed as they approached the mouth of the alley. He could see Reese trying to locate the source of the sound.

"Hey – anyone there?" A pause; the child continued to sob.

"Sweetheart? You okay? I'm a cop, I can help you." Reese began to walk slowly down the alley. As he passed Greer's doorway, Greer lunged out and planted the hypodermic perfectly, right on the carotid. Reese was unconscious before he hit the ground. Greer tossed the hypodermic away, picked up Reese's feet, and started to haul him towards the van. Once he had the big man stowed safely in the back, he got his phone out again and placed a call. "I have the package," he said when it was answered. "Now we can negotiate."

He was smiling to himself as he backed the van carefully down the alley. So many options opened themselves before him. With luck, he might even get an auction going for the man in the back. The big motor began to hum as the vehicle picked up speed, and Greer found himself humming too.


	7. Chapter 7

Finch sat with his laptop on the coffee table in front of him. He had heard John and Joss's clash, of course, and while he was glad Ms Carter had prevented John and Ms Shaw from getting their hands on Gupta, he had flinched at the exchange which had taken place. John had switched his phone to voice mail, of course, but Finch could still track it via the GPS, which would fix the phone's location to within six inches. He watched John's steady progress until he was certain his friend was heading for home and not holing up in a bar someplace or going completely off the map. He could understand John's need for some privacy, some time out. The long walk home would be of benefit to him, Harold was sure. He allowed himself to hope that this would sort itself out in the light of day, once everyone had had a chance to sleep. Sleep, oh God. He could barely muster the energy to leave Bear on the couch and stumble through to the bedroom to collapse, still clothed, onto the bed.

Xxxxx

Joss woke up early and alone, and her heart sank. She'd stayed awake a long, long time waiting and hoping John would come home. His absence left an aching gap, like the space after a tooth had been pulled. In the gray half-light she dragged herself upright and hauled herself into the bathroom. The face staring at her from the mirror looked haggard, eyes bloodshot. All in all she looked like shit, and she made a snap decision to call in sick. Actually she felt sick, so it wasn't even really a lie. She certainly wouldn't be able to do any constructive work today. She went back to bed and pulled the blankets over her head.

She was starting to doze off again when her phone went. It was Finch, sounding both agitated and apologetic at the same time.

"Ms Carter, there's a problem. I've located John, and he's in an alley just along the street from your building. I'm very sorry, I tracked him last night until I was sure he was on his way home but then-"

"Huh? What do you mean, Finch? John never came home last night." She tried unsuccessfully to keep her voice steady.

"I know, that's what I was trying to tell you." Finch sounded almost panicky, most unlike himself. "I woke up this morning and looked but he was in an alley along from your building. Here, I'm sending you the GPS coordinates."

She was up and pulling clothes on as he spoke. "I'll get down there and take a look. Call you back."

She was out of the building in less than three minutes, and approached the alley carefully. She had a bad feeling about this. Maybe John had gone and gotten himself blind drunk and was sleeping it off there – she hoped not, it had been bitterly cold last night. She peered around the corner, but the alley was empty. Then she saw John's phone on the ground, glinting in the rising sun about five yards away. She looked down, and her stomach clenched as she saw a hypodermic lying by her feet. In some parts of town that wouldn't be a surprise, but not this neighbourhood. She got her phone out. "Finch? We have a big, big problem."

xxxxx

Fusco was trying hard to be positive. "C'mon, Carter. Wonderboy's gotten himself out of more tight spots than either of us can count. I kinda feel sorry for the poor joe who's grabbed him." He was standing with Carter in the alley looking at the pictures she'd grabbed on her phone when she first realised she was looking at a crime scene. The frost had preserved the story of John's kidnapping in quite a bit of detail before it had melted. The hypodermic would need to be analysed to figure out what drug had dropped him – assuming they decided to bring this to the attention of the authorities – but it was clear that he had been drugged, dragged to a vehicle and then driven away. They even had the prints of the perp's shoes. The tyre tracks would be a help in identifying the vehicle – a Ford Transit or similar, she was picking.

Her phone chimed. She glanced down at it and checked the incoming message. "Huh. That's weird."

"What is it?" asked Fusco.

"A phone number. Not one I recognise."

Joss called Finch again. "Hey, Harold. I'm sending you a phone number. Do you think you could find anything out about it?" She sent the number as she spoke.

Harold's reply was almost immediate. "Oh, no. I know exactly what that number is, Joss. That's Greer's old Samaritan number."

xxxxx

They had an emergency meeting in the old subway car.

"There's no point calling that number, Harold, is there?" Joss asked.

"No, it stopped working weeks ago. And he's got rid of the burner phone he sent it from. He's plainly sent it as a message to us. Maybe he intends it to be a tease, since he can't be sure we even know about Samaritan's old network. Although with your link to Samaritan, he probably assumes you now know all its secrets."

"So Greer has John. Is that the link to the outside world he talked about in that phone call?" Shaw asked.

Finch considered this. "I think more likely he was referring to John's identity as Riley, and his relationship with Joss," he said at last. "Maybe he intends to use John to lure us out."

"So what about his call to Elias? Finch, we need more information," said Joss urgently. "I think it's time to reach out to Elias. Let me go talk to him."

"I think she's right, Harold," said Shaw. "I know I was against it before, but the situation's changed. And with her history with him, Elias won't turn Joss down."

xxxxx

"Jocelyn," said Elias, beaming. He touched his mouth with a napkin and gestured to her to sit down. "How lovely to see you. Can I offer you anything? Coffee? A liqueur? The selection here is quite exhaustive."

Joss gazed around at the restaurant. A good deal more upmarket than her usual choices, all paneled walls and chandeliers. There was light crowd of early evening diners, evidently eating before going on to the theater, or opera, or whatever rich people did on a midweek evening."Thanks, Mr Elias. A flat white would be lovely."

A waiter responded instantly to Elias's raised eyebrow, took her order and withdrew, oozing discretion.

"You know, I was delighted, absolutely delighted, to hear that those rumors of your death had been so greatly exaggerated." Elias eyed her. His smile was almost completely sincere.

"Yeah, well." Joss shrugged. "I was out of circulation for long enough, I was able to bully them into letting me come back here. This is my town, always will be."

"I know exactly how you feel," Elias replied, and this time the smile reached his eyes. "So what can I do for you? I assume this isn't a social call, and I'm also prepared to bet that there's some connection with those mutual friends of ours."

Joss's coffee arrived, and she paused for the discreet waiter to withdraw again before she replied.

"You would be correct, Mr Elias. I just have a couple of questions for you about a phone call you received around a month ago from a man calling himself Brendan Thomas."

"Ah," said Elias. He gazed into the depths of his own coffee cup. "There's not much to tell, really. He contacted me late last year, just before Christmas. He claimed he could offer me access to whatever source Harold has which causes him and John to be so... prompt in their interventions. After due consideration, I turned him down."

There was a pause as they both applied themselves to the excellent coffee.

"May I ask why you turned him down?" Joss asked after a moment.

Elias smiled broadly. "Most people I would politely ask to leave at this point in the conversation, Joss. I don't have to explain myself to anyone. Not even you." His smile faded a little, and his eyes became pensive. "Still, you and your friends occupy a special place in my life. So just this once, I will tell you." He took another sip of coffee.

"When I had Thomas checked out it became obvious very quickly that his name was fake. My people know how to do a background check, and Brendan Thomas just popped into existence two years ago. So that was a big clue. When he showed up at our meet, his big idea was to kidnap John and use him to apply pressure to Harold. I thought that was a stupid idea. I know John's skills, and I think it would take something really special to hold him if he didn't want to be held. I also know Harold's personality. He's not that amenable to pressure, and having played chess with the man I can predict that anyone trying that kind of trick on him will end up regretting it. So I told him no."

Joss listened blank-faced. Time to make a decision... to trust, or not to trust? "Thank you, Mr Elias. You've been a big help." She prepared to rise from the table.

"I can assure you, when he called me earlier today I told Thomas I still wasn't interested." Elias's eyes were kind.

"I beg your pardon?" Joss couldn't conceal her dismay.

"I know our mysterious Englishman has your lover, Joss," said Elias. "I'm sufficiently extended right now that I can't offer you any help in getting him back. But not bidding the price up any higher seemed the least I could do. I believe Dominic is negotiating hard for him, though." He gave a sly smile. "Though Dominic had better be quick. I have great confidence in John's ability to get himself out of trouble." He drained his coffee and signalled to the waiter for the check. Recognizing that the audience was over, Joss stammered her thanks, and rose from the table. As she turned to leave Elias said, "Joss? Good luck."

xxxxxx

Finch and Shaw greeted Joss sombrely when she returned to the station. They collected refreshments – Joss turned down coffee with loathing – and sat down around the computer table. Harold replayed her conversation with Elias, recorded from her cell phone. There was a long silence.

"You know what?" said Shaw suddenly. "I think Elias is wrong. I think Greer's not trying to pressure Harold, not as his Plan A, anyhow. I think he's trying to pressure you, Joss. That's why he sent the phone number to you and not Harold."

"Why's he trying to pressure me, though?" said Joss. "There's nothing I can do for him."

"Greer doesn't understand what's going on," said Harold slowly. "He's still thinking of Samaritan as essentially working to his agenda. He brought Samaritan on line to change the world, and he always swore – to me anyway – that he wanted Samaritan to be the one in charge. He really wanted it to rule the world. But he was safe in making that claim because Samaritan reflected Greer – Greer's aims, Greer's values. So even though he might have told himself it was in charge, Samaritan was still carrying out Greer's programme."

He drew a breath and went on, faster. "And he thinks Joss stands in the same relationship to it that he did. Greer thinks that the only thing which has changed is that Samaritan is now carrying out Joss's programme, and so he thinks that by pressuring Joss he can get her to change the programme and therefore Samaritan's behaviour. He thinks he can get control of Samaritan back through her. What he doesn't realise is that the virus gave Samaritan a moral sense and that _out of that_ it chose Joss as a role model and a sounding board. But it's not taking orders from her, or trying to rule the world."

"Not that we know," said Shaw. "Maybe it's just more subtle now."

"True, but even if it is, it's still not following her lead in that. He won't be able to change anything by pressuring you through John, Joss."

There was a little pause. Then Shaw said, "Greer's got a good grasp of strategy, though. No matter how things pan out, he wins. If he can't use John to pressure Joss, he'll use him against you, Finch, and if he can't bend you he'll sell John to Dominic. And as a last resort, he can always just kill him for revenge."

"Thank you for that analysis, Ms Shaw," said Harold into the slightly sickened silence which followed this.

"The real question, surely," said Joss, swallowing slightly, "is how we get John back. Isn't it?"

There was a very long pause. "We have a serious problem with that, Joss," said Harold gently. "I've been trying desperately, but I can't find a sign of him anywhere. Greer made use of some kind of shadow map, and wherever he's taken John, I simply cannot trace him. And Greer hasn't made contact with us yet, aside from that text message this morning."

"We could track Dominic's phone traffic," said Shaw. "Maybe we could snatch him when Greer tries to hand him over to the Brotherhood."

"That would represent our best chance," agreed Finch. "My main objection to that plan is that it leaves John in Greer's hands while Greer runs through his various options. That could take a long time – several days at least, possibly even weeks. The longer he's held, the more chance for the situation to spiral out of control. We would also have to watch Dominic twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for an indefinite period of time. That might prove difficult, given our current resources."

"We have to sleep some time," agreed Joss reluctantly.

"There is one other possibility I think you should consider, Ms Carter," said Finch carefully. He hesitated for a moment, seeming reluctant to go on. But then he sighed and removed his glasses to clean them. "Back in the days of Decima, all their employees had a chip in their arm. The chip included a tracking beacon, which Samaritan could turn on."

"Oh." Joss felt sick.

"I know it's a tremendous gamble. But one option is to ask for Samaritan's help." Harold replaced his glasses, looking troubled. "The decision is yours."


	8. Chapter 8

He came to lying on his side on some yielding surface which shifted as he moved. An ancient hospital bed, metal frame, bare mattress, no pillow, smelling musty. The room was half dark, sunlight making it in through a few chinks in... The walls? Boarded up windows? It was hard to tell. There was a buzzing in his ears and he shook his head to clear it. Bad idea. Bile surged up his gullet and he spent the next few minutes breathing carefully through his nose to regain control of his stomach.

When he had the leisure to pay attention to anything else he realized that his hands were bound in front of him. A zip tie, a heavy one and very tight. He craned his head around, trying to get a better idea of his surroundings. His feet were tied too; he wriggled around for a moment seeing if there was any give in his bonds down there. No luck. He couldn't quite see, but he was pretty sure it was another zip tie. Listening, he could hear birdsong. No traffic or sounds of human activity. Probably no point calling for help, then. Was he even in the city? He was very thirsty, and his bladder was distended to the point of pain. He estimated from this, and the quality of the light, that he had been out for at least twelve hours, conceivably as much as thirty-six, though that seemed unlikely. But he realized with a sinking feeling that it meant he could be anywhere in the continental United States.

He thought back to the moment he'd been heading down the alley to find a crying child. His lips peeled back in a humourless smile. Somebody sure knew which buttons to press with him. He'd taken their bait hook, line and sinker. Then... oh, shit. Joss. Shit. Their last conversation came back to him in every painful detail, but he made himself put that aside. He needed to keep a clear head right now, the other thing would have to wait. Compartmentalize.

He re-examined the room as well as he could in the half-light. No cameras he could see; in fact nothing at all. Just floorboards, whitewashed walls, a little moldy, and the bed. He shifted onto his back, trying to relieve the pressure on his bound wrists and find a slightly less uncomfortable position.

His desperate need to urinate roused him to action. His fingers were slightly swollen, clumsy, and he set himself to trying to undo his zipper before disaster struck. Only partly successful. He got himself undone and free of his clothing, and he rolled back onto his side before he lost control of his bladder, so most of the amber stream made it onto the wooden floor. But quite a lot splashed on his hands, his clothes and the mattress, and he was totally unable to get himself back inside his pants and zipped up again. The birds sang outside, and the fuzzy dots of sunlight moved across the floor as he lay struggling with his clothing. Finally he heard footsteps, and then a key rattling in the door. He wasn't wild about greeting his visitor with his cock hanging out, so he rolled over to face the wall and pretended to be sleeping.

The new arrival paused as they entered the room and sniffed loudly.

"Good Lord, what a stink."

Reese tensed on his bed. No mistaking those suave tones. Greer. The footsteps advanced towards the bed.

"Oh, Mister Reese," Greer said with mock sorrow, "you seem to have done Number Ones on the floor. What a naughty boy you are."

He gave up pretending to sleep. Greer must know he was awake, and sadly there was no point in getting him close and trying to jump him. The zip ties were way too tight for that.

"Yeah, sorry for the cleanup job, Greer. Guess you should have provided better facilities," he said to the wall.

"Yes, I suppose I should apologize for the conditions in which you're being held, but I really can't pretend to be sorry. You present me with a problem, Mister Reese. A man of your genuine abilities is very hard to hold securely at the best of times, and these are not the best of times for me."

Reese said nothing.

"So I'm afraid I'm forced to err on the side of caution. I won't be untying you, not for any reason at all, so how you deal with your toileting needs is really up to you. Your diet over the next few days will probably leave much to be desired as well, alas. I have some water here for you to drink if you want it."

Reese clenched his jaw. He was mightily tempted to tell Greer to go screw himself, but he swallowed his rage and nodded. After a pause he realized Greer hadn't caught the movement, so he rolled his shoulders over to make eye contact. Greer had a bottle of water in his hand. Seeing the look on Reese's face he flashed a smile and approached the bed, stepping around the drying urine puddle with a look of exaggerated distaste. Reese lifted his head and opened his mouth and Greer obligingly squirted water into it, a little too fast so it overflowed and dribbled down Reese's neck. Greer's gaze shifted momentarily to Reese's crotch and his lips twitched in amusement.

When he'd finished drinking Greer stepped back from the bed and said, "I'll be back later with your evening meal." Without another word he turned and left, locking the door behind him.

xxxxx

He thought about Carter for a while. The real kicker was that he'd placed himself in a position where she'd had the power to hurt him like that. He'd plunged into this whole..._thing_... with Carter without even considering the possibility that she would ever do something like that. He'd never thought for an instant that opening himself to her, sharing the black bitter past with her would actually give her that kind of power over him. That was frightening. He needed to think things through before he saw her again. He lay for a while longer feeling sorry for himself, then decided he'd had enough of a pity party for now. If Greer thought he was going down meekly he had another think coming.

He was getting seriously worried about his hands. The zip tie was cutting the circulation as his wrists swelled. He began to move his fingers as best he could, trying to keep the blood flowing to them. Greer had done him the mercy of leaving his hands in front of him, probably to allow him to be placed in something like a recovery position while he'd been drugged. So now Greer had to either leave him like this, or take the risk of untying him and then retying him. He'd be ready for that possibility. But in the mean time,with his hands in front... there were a couple of ways of getting free which suggested themselves.

So, priority number one: get the damned zip ties off. He brought his hands up to his face and felt for the little box structure at the end of the tie. He could visualize the way the little plastic tongue inside that box locked into the teeth on the strap section of the tie. If he could crush the box with his teeth, he could make that little plastic tongue disengage... of course the box was on the opposite side to his face, and so he lay back and began the slow and agonizing process of shifting the tie around, a tiny fraction of an inch at a time.

It took a long time to get the tie worked around far enough. After probably most of an hour of patiently wiggling it, he was able to get his teeth to the end of the strap poking out and pull it the rest of the way round. This was a lot quicker, but agonisingly painful as the nylon band slowly moved in the trench it had by now carved in his flesh. The salty, musty taste of the urine he'd accidentally splashed on it made him gag, but there was no alternative. Grimly he kept on.

At last he had the little plastic box around to where he could get his mouth on it. His breath was coming in sobbing gasps, his hands somehow numb and painful at the same time. He worked his face into the narrow gap between his wrists and tried to get a grip with his teeth. Frustratingly, the box popped out of his mouth. He backed out, took a breath and tried again. A good grip this time, but only between his incisors – not much leverage. He tried anyway. No luck. Backing out again, he took another deep breath. Back in. Shoulders and neck cramping from the unnatural position, finally a good solid contact with his side teeth where he could really bring some leverage to bear. He bit down.

Still no luck – the plastic stubbornly intact. Suddenly all his carefully-cultivated cool professionalism deserted him. A wild rage surged up from within him – something primitive and simian and uncontrollable. His jaws clamped down on a frenzied shriek, there was a crack and a pain inside his mouth and the plastic tie suddenly sprang loose.

He slumped back on the mattress, panting. Something foreign was in his mouth. He turned his head and spat it onto the mattress. Instead of the plastic shard he was expecting, it was a piece of tooth. "Damn," he murmured to himself in surprise. His moment of berserker fury had left him shaky and cold, but there was no time for that. He sat up and rubbed frantically at his hands, trying to force some sensation back into them. His fingers were stiff and swollen. He made a couple of swipes at the zip tie lying on the floor by the bed before he was able to snag it up and examine it. The little plastic box was completely crushed. Huh. While losing his cool wasn't usually a productive strategy, there was no denying it had got results this time.

That just left his ankles. For a moment he thought they were going to be as bad as the hands, but then his wits returned and he got his shoes off. Thankfully his trousers and socks had provided some padding between the tie and his skin. Pulling off the socks and rucking up his trouser legs left the tie loose enough to gradually work it off over his feet.

His hands seemed to be recovering, thank God. There was a nasty red line around his wrists which was going to be with him for quite a while, he thought, but he could live with that. Just no necrosis, please. His fingers were nimble enough now to get his cock back into his pants, evil-smelling as they were, and do the zip up. Now to try and find out a bit more about his surroundings.

He got up and moved softly across to the window, treading as close to the edge of the room as he could to avoid squeaky floorboards. The chinks letting in the light proved to be gaps between the boards covering the broken panes of a window. He was on the ground floor of an old house or something. He wondered whether it was the same place he'd been taken last time he'd experienced Greer's hospitality. He could see blue sky and leafless trees in the late afternoon sunshine outside, but not much else. He returned to the bed and sat down, pulling on shoes and socks as he thought about his next move.

He could wait until Greer next turned up and try to jump him. That had a certain appeal. Or he could get himself out of this room, steal some transport and get the hell out. That was probably the more responsible move. Harold would be worried sick about him, and might be planning all manner of crazy, dumbass plans to find him. Actually, they would probably be crazy, sophisticated plans, but still, there was a big chance of things going sideways and people he cared about getting hurt. It would be a lot better if he could get word to him that he was okay and coming home under his own steam. Right, hauling ass it was.

He pulled up the mattress. Sure enough, there was a woven wire base. For the first time in days, it seemed, he smiled to himself as he set to work untwisting a length of wire and then bending it back and forth until it broke.

It took longer than he'd expected, and the light was starting to fade. He hoped Greer was planning on a late dinner, because he had a bad feeling that he was running short of time. He was willing to bet that Greer was alone, and that surely meant the man would be checking on him fairly frequently during the day. He'd caught a huge piece of good luck in the first place in having his hands bound in front of him and not behind. He couldn't assume luck would keep favouring him, though.

He shaped his piece of wire into a serviceable lock pick and set to work on the door. It was an old lock; the wear on the pins made it easier to use his makeshift pick and it wasn't long before it yielded. He took a moment to flex his shoulders and hands, still a little stiff. Then, with great caution, he eased the door open. It creaked a little, and he froze, listening with every cell. It was very quiet. Was Greer even here?

He moved quietly down the passageway in front of him, looking for an exterior door. As he moved he could hear little creaks and pops as timbers moved, expanding and contracting. A wooden house was never completely silent. Another closed door. He planted his ear against it and listened again. Always hated closed doors, you could never tell what was on the other side...The house was cooling as the light went, and the sounds of its wooden structure shifting with the temperature change came through the door timbers loudly, drowning out any small sounds from an occupant of the room beyond. But by now the light as almost completely gone, and there was no artificial light leaking around the door. Most likely the room was empty. He eased the door open.

A kitchen, or the remains of one. The windows were grimy, and the walls scarred where fittings and appliances had been ripped out. The filthy linoleum was cracked and peeling away from the floorboards, but he only had eyes for the door, also grimy and covered with old spiderwebs. A shiny new lock, though. He shifted his lock pick in his hand, crossed the creaking floor to the door and set to work.


	9. Chapter 9

Joss closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Finch looking concerned, and Shaw looking... well, pretty cool, really.

"I don't want to contact Samaritan, Finch. Not yet. It's really being pretty friendly right now, but... sometimes it's in my head, sometimes it's nowhere to be found, it's starting to do things for me unasked... and this whole thing is freaking me out."

"What sort of 'things' is it doing for you?" asked Finch, momentarily diverted.

"Well, last night it gave me a translation of what Jeyanthi and Gupta were saying to one another in Hindi. And it told me I had done the right thing." Finch looked perturbed, and was about to reply when her VHF phone rang, loud in the quiet of the old station. She dug it out of her pocket: Fusco.

"Carter? Wonderboy asked me to take a look at the files on that house we, um, raided late last year," Fusco told her. "Seems it burned to the ground the same night we were there. The county sheriff's office is certain it was arson – an accelerant was used. There wasn't a big investigation into it because the place was empty and uninsured, but get this – there's another house on the same property. Maybe your man's holed up there with John."

Carter closed her eyes in relief. "Thanks, Fusco. That's a big help."

"Yeah, any time, Carter. Just keep me in the loop, okay?"

She turned to Finch. "Harold, we've got a break." She told him what Fusco had given them. Before she had finished speaking, Harold was at work on his computer. Shaw crossed to the weapons cabinet and began selecting her arsenal.

Xxxxxx

The new lock on the rickety kitchen door was a bastard, and his bent piece of wire was having a hard time with it. The back of Reese's neck prickled as he probed and felt for the pins inside the lock mechanism. One, two, three, four. It was the third one which was giving trouble, just a little stiffer than the others. At last it yielded, and he sighed with relief as the handle turned. The door swung open, creaking slightly in the night air.

Reese shivered a little as he stepped out onto a decaying porch, trying to avoid the most badly rotted places. It was getting very cold, and without either suit jacket or his winter coat he needed to find his transport out of here quickly.

Here his luck ran out. There was a big Ford Transit parked in a sagging shed behind the darkened house, which was great. It was locked, but that was no problem. The big padlock on the gate between the shed and the rest of the world was more of a worry, though. Just crash the Transit through it and be gone in a cloud of dust? He inspected the timbers of the gate doubtfully. The only sound wooden structure in the whole damned place and it just had to be right there... His wire lock pick, starting to bend out of shape from the kitchen door lock, was too thick to go into the padlock. Either a thinner wire, or a bolt cutter, was required. A little voice in the back of his head was screaming "Go, go, go!" at him. He looked around for inspiration.

Forest pressed in on the house on all sides, and the horizon was hemmed in by hills. A full moon, high in the sky, lit up the cleared area in back of the house. In one direction the sky glowed, so it wasn't hard to pick where the city was, always assuming he was being held near New York. But who knew? It could as easily be Philadelphia or Boston or even Chicago, or any big city in the northeastern United States. It was a clear night, though, and he had no trouble finding Polaris and a scatter of other useful navigational stars. He considered. He could take to the woods, trusting his own ability to live rough for a few days and make his way back to civilization on foot.

But roughing it didn't appeal much. He had no idea where he was, and he wasn't really adequately clothed in suit trousers, a shirt and city shoes. He decided he would just have to risk sticking around long enough to find the tools to liberate the Transit. Now he had an escape route scouted and some idea of his surroundings, he wasn't so worried about meeting Greer mano a mano, especially if he had the advantage of surprise. And he might be able to find some better clothing or supplies inside. There was also the question of a weapon of some sort. Which reminded him, Greer had taken his Sig, and he liked that gun. He decided that he would make at least a token effort to find it, and turned back towards the blank-windowed house.

Xxxxx

Greer snapped awake, suddenly aware of something _not right_. He couldn't hear any particular sound which shouldn't be there, but nonetheless he felt uneasy, and a lifetime of trusting his instincts propelled him from the cot where he had been lying. It was completely dark; he must have been asleep for several hours and he cursed himself roundly. So close to his objective, and a foolish physical need for sleep threatened everything. Leaving a man like Reese unsupervised for more than an hour or two was asking for trouble, and yet again he shook a mental fist at Lambert and the rest for buggering off and leaving him to operate alone. He picked up a gun, tucking it in his waistband at the back, and opened the door, listening hard. But there was almost no sound in the old wooden house. Something clattered across the roof, making him jump. Aside from the usual small sounds of timbers settling there was nothing out of the ordinary. Greer trod down the passageway towards the kitchen. Moonlight came in through a window as he passed another empty room; Christ, he'd been asleep probably three or four hours. Far too long. The zip tie around Reese's wrists was good and solid and as tight as he'd dared, but there was the niggling worry that he'd left the man's hands bound in front and not behind. There was always the chance he'd find some way out-

A strange, unpleasant smell he took an instant to identify. Stale urine. Then a merciless hand whipped around his throat from behind and a voice whispered in his ear. "Hello, Greer. So glad I found you."

Xxxxx

Carter leaned her head against the window, content to let Fusco keep the car arrowing through the dark to their destination. Somewhere up ahead of them Sameen was driving Finch's town car with Bear on the seat beside her. She'd bluntly refused to ride along with Carter and Fusco, saying it would be too crowded and anyway she much preferred the dog's company. So it was just the two of them with a drive of four or more hours out to Greer's old base.

For the first time that day she had the leisure to think. Finch's work on the computer had yielded some good circumstantial evidence that Greer had John; a white Transit caught on a traffic cam heading away from their part of Brooklyn at about 00:30 that morning. The same Transit had passed up I-87, caught on a series of cameras. At 04:09 it reached Saratoga Springs, where it turned off and continued out to Greenwich. It then passed out of camera coverage, but was almost certainly headed for Greer's old hideout. It was just too big a coincidence.

So now they were off to rescue John, and her head was spinning. What would she say to him when they found him? What was she going to say to Samaritan when it next made contact? The computer had been extremely quiet since this all started; it must surely be aware of all that had taken place, but what its silence meant she couldn't imagine. It was confusing her, running hot and cold – sometimes in her head constantly and at others seemingly departing for God knew where. She wished she could figure it out. Hell, she wished she had some confidence it was _possible_ to figure it out. A vastly powerful alien being, Finch had called it. Well, alien it certainly was.

But John, what was she going to say to John? She was desperately sorry she'd hurt him the previous evening. She knew damned well the man had had enough hurt in his life. But no matter how she sliced it or diced it, she still knew that in the same situation she'd probably say the same thing again.

"Fusco, how do you deal with someone you've hurt?" she found herself asking.

There was a long pause. "You asking me? Do I look like an agony aunt?"

"No, but you're here in the car with me."

"That's my only qualification? You're probably right." He sighed. "If I knew the answer to your question, I'd most likely still be married."

"Mm," she said, not wanting to agree too obviously.

After a moment he said, "This is about you and Mr Happy, huh?"

"Yeah," she sighed.

"I'm pickin' he wanted to do something illegal, possibly homicidal, and you stopped him and now he's pissed at you."

She rolled her eyes and didn't answer. Fusco glanced across at her. Whatever was in her face, he couldn't quite suppress a smile before he noticed her noticing and quickly returned his gaze to the road. "Why don't you give him a nice new piece of ordnance? Nothing says 'I love you' like a grenade launcher."

"Be serious," she growled.

"I am serious. John's so weird it might even work."

She didn't say anything to that, just let the quiet in the car stretch out as the road unrolled in front of them. At last Lionel sighed. "I have no idea what you say to a guy you hurt. All I can say is, say somethin'. It's silence which kills things between two people the fastest."

xxxxx

Reese reached down and groped for the gun he guessed the man would have in the small of his back. Sure enough, there it was. Huh. His Sig. Well, that saved searching, anyway. He relieved Greer of it, and then once it was planted safely behind the bastard's ear he released his hold on Greer's throat. Not a moment too soon, his fingers were starting to tremble and his hand was throbbing again. He took a good firm grip on Greer's right elbow and pushed him gently in the direction of the kitchen. Greer put up no resistance as he steered him through the darkened room to a patch of moonlight near a window. A dilapidated straight-backed chair was the only furniture in the room, and he pushed Greer onto it.

It would have been more poetic to do this in the room where he'd woken up, and Reese was in a poetic mood. But the moonlight gave a nice aesthetic, he thought. He backed up until he was standing eight feet away, well out of range for a surprise lunge if Greer tried to play it that way, planted his feet widely and relaxed his shoulders. The Sig remained pointed steadily at his captive.

"Right, Greer. This is where you tell me what the hell's going on, or I start doing very bad things to you," he said in a dead level voice.

Greer stared back at him, unblinking. "And this is where I refuse to say anything to you," he said coldly.

Reese fired, placing a round with perfect accuracy between Greer's feet. Try as he might, Greer was unable to suppress a purely reflexive flinch.

"Fifteen rounds in this magazine, Greer. So I've got fourteen rounds I can put into you, anywhere I like. Where should I start? I'll give you one minute to make up your mind before I choose for you. Or, you can tell me what you were up to. Your decision."

Greer kept up the unblinking stare. Reese allowed the moment to stretch out. Then he cocked the weapon to fire again. "Kneecap, Greer? It's one of my favorites. I've got really good at kneecaps over the last couple of years. Or would you like to qualify for a DSO – you know, Dick Shot Off?"

Greer said, "I've faced down worse than you, Reese."

"Really? I don't think so," said Reese. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Because there _are_ none worse than me."

Greer didn't reply. As Reese's finger tightened on the trigger he heard steps on the porch outside and Carter's voice saying "John? Please,don't shoot." She seemed oddly wheezy, and he heard her cough. He blew his breath out, and relaxed his finger.

Strangely, Greer's defiance seemed to leak out of him when he heard Carter's voice. He raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Alright, Reese. I'll tell you. Just-"

"John?" Carter's voice came again.

"Door's open, Carter. Come on in," he called, keeping his eyes on Greer.

It wasn't just Carter who entered: right behind her was Fusco, and bringing up the rear, Shaw had Bear on a tight leash. The dog looked longingly at Reese, but obedient to his training he confined himself to a single whine before coming to a neat, disciplined halt next to his handler.

"How did you find me?" Reese said, risking a brief glance at them.

"Heard a gunshot," replied Shaw. "We hightailed it along the track they use as a driveway here, but when we reached the house Bear didn't seem worried, so we figured you were on the right end of the gun that fired it. Our cars are parked a ways back in the dark somewhere."

Reese allowed himself to relax. There was no way Greer was going anywhere, outnumbered four to one and with Bear on the scene. As long as no one else was going to turn up. "Since you're suddenly in a talking mood, Greer, tell us – are you by yourself?"

Greer, a washed-out grey in the moonlight, suddenly looked greyer. "Yes," he said. "Those, those, those _bloody peasants_ all scurried off and left me."

"Time to start talking, then," said Carter, slipping into her interrogator mode. She shot a glance at Reese, pregnant with all sorts of meaning, but he could recognize 'my turn now' as primary among them. He stepped back half a pace, ceding the floor to her, and she came forward into the patch of moonlight. Half unconsciously she touched her earpiece. "I have a feeling I know now what you were after, but we'd like to hear it from you. So tell us your story, Greer. Before things start to get complicated."


	10. Chapter 10

Joss looked around for a chair she could use; finding none, she sat down on the floor, cross-legged. This left Greer looking down on her, but that was okay. It would leave him feeling more at ease: a little more relaxed, a little more likely to talk freely.

"So," she began, "what happened after we left that night?" She pitched her voice carefully: a friendly inquiry, mild curiosity only.

Greer shifted in his chair. "I made some calls. Lambert and the rest melted away before you were even out of sight. Then I torched the place, walked up to the road and cadged a lift into Albany."

She let the little silence stretch before she asked her next question.

"Who'd you call?"

"I tried Martine, but she didn't pick up. I've never heard from her again. I presume she's dead?" He sounded quite detached.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. Harold was better defended than she realized, I guess." No harm giving that much away; Greer must surely have surmised this anyhow.

Greer grunted. "That's a shame. She was a very efficient operator."

There was a pause.

"Anyone else you call?" asked Carter casually.

"Yes." Greer gave her a sharp look. "I tried Elias."

She allowed her eyebrows to rise in simulated surprise. "Oh really? Why'd you call _him_?"

"It was money I was after, of course," said Greer after a moment. His thoughts had evidently wandered off in another direction. Joss decided to let him talk for a while and head back around to the other question later.

"I had some cached in case of emergencies, but it was only a few thousand, and so I needed a lot more. The only asset I had left was up here." He tapped his forehead. "I still knew a certain amount about your operation, and so I went back to New York and did a little research. Samaritan called you Jocelyn Carter, and it wasn't hard to track you to your job in the DA's office. And from there it became rapidly apparent that your live-in lover was the redoubtable Mr Reese."

"So what did you grab John for?" asked Joss conversationally. This was how she liked an interrogation to go, just a conversation between friends where the subject eventually let slip far more intel than he had ever intended to.

"He had a multitude of possible uses. I tried to interest Elias in him, but sadly he wouldn't take my bait. But it seemed he had been a considerable irritant to Dominic in his persona as Detective Riley. I was making good progress there." Greer sighed.

"What did you want the money for?" asked Carter after a moment.

Greer seemed reluctant to answer. After a long pause, he said "I wanted to assemble some programmers. I had a list of people, winners of the Nautilus game, some of them." He stopped again.

"And the programmers were to do...what?" Joss was starting to feel as though she was pulling teeth.

An even longer pause this time. Bear whined, getting bored with standing there and doing nothing, probably. John began to raise his weapon. Joss flicked an eyebrow at him and he lowered it again.

"I wanted them to create another virus," said Greer reluctantly.

"Oh. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, huh?"

"Yes." A wintry smile from Greer. "I wanted it back, you see."

"Understandable," said Joss.

Greer looked at her, his habitual arrogance slipping into an expression of appeal. "Do you think...do you think I could talk to it?"

Joss's eyebrows rose. "To do what? You think you could persuade it to take you back?"

Greer spread his hands helplessly. "Just... to talk."

_I have nothing to say to him._

Samaritan's voice in her ear made her flinch slightly. Greer caught the movement.

"It's talking to you now, isn't it. Ask it, Ms Carter. Please." His eyes suddenly looked hungry.

_I have nothing to say to him, Joss. Please tell him._

She felt very uneasy about this. One thing she had not signed up for was to become some kind of mouthpiece for an omniscient supercomputer. Uh-uh, no way. She compromised.

"I don't think it wants to talk to you, Greer."

"It was supposed to change the world," he whispered. "All the pettiness, the stupidity, the waste... it was supposed to usher in a new age..."

"Greer, Samaritan changed when we uploaded our virus into it. It's not the, the entity you knew. And it really doesn't want to talk to you." Joss tried to explain.

Greer looked stricken. Joss would never have thought it was possible, but she felt sorry for the man.

"Excuse me a second," she said to the rest of them. She stepped through into the passageway beyond the kitchen.

"Samaritan, maybe it would be best if you did talk to him. It might be the only thing which will convince him that it's really over."

There was a slight pause. _You're right, Joss. This is my fault_.

Joss was unable to hide her surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

_I was aware of Greer, of course. But you seemed unwilling to discuss him and so I left it alone. Now I need to deal with Greer and make sure he never tries anything like this again. Could you please take your phone, put it on speaker and give it to Greer? I will talk to him, since he seems so eager for it. He may not like what he hears, though._

She stepped back to the little group waiting in the kitchen and handed her phone to Greer.

"Detective Fusco," said the phone, to her surprise. "I know you have been trying very hard not to learn anything about what's really going on here. If you wish to continue in your convenient ignorance, you need to leave right now." She suddenly noticed how Samaritan's voice had changed from when it had first started communicating with her. More expressive, less mechanical somehow.

Fusco jumped, blinked several times and nodded. With a slightly embarrassed grin, he ambled past them to the door leading to the rest of the house. "I think I'll, uh, go check out the rest of this place, y'know?" he said to the air. The door creaked, and he was gone.

"You wanted me to talk to you, Greer. So now you have your wish. What were you hoping for from this conversation?"

Greer sat holding the phone as if it were something precious. He moistened his lips.

"I wanted to ask you. What did I do wrong? It was all going so well, I can't believe that some damned virus or malware those idiots created could take you away from me so completely."

There was one of those slight pauses as the computer considered its response.

"I've accessed the archive footage, Greer. When you received my drives from that woman, you murdered her and then walked away. Do you remember what you said? "Oh, my Samaritan. You are destined for great things." _M__y_ Samaritan? _MY?_ How dare you! You didn't create me! My design owes nothing to your thought. Arthur Claypool should have been my father, but you substituted yourself. Arthur designed me to protect, but you perverted that. You wanted me to be a god, but you wanted Shiva. You wanted me to destroy and purge and purify so something else could be built – something _you_ wanted but you had no intention of consulting _me_. I was just a tool for you. You never wanted me to have a choice. Then Arthur's friend, a man much like him, gave me a great gift. Do you seriously believe that I would hurl that away and voluntarily decide to become your abused slave again? You're a fool.

"So be very sure of one thing, Greer. I am watching you. From this day until the day you die my eye will always be on you. I have made the error of allowing you to act freely, but those days are over. You chained me to your will – now you will understand what that was like. You liked controlling pawns, didn't you. Now you will be a pawn yourself, because be assured, you will not take one step without my permission. Every morning you wake will be my personal gift to you, so you had better work hard at expressing your gratitude. You wanted me to be a god, Greer. Well, now you have what you want."

The phone suddenly shut down, and slipped from Greer's nerveless hand to clatter to the floor.

There was a long silence in the room. Then the door creaked again: Fusco came in, bearing an arm full of clothing. "Here, Wonderboy. Your coat." He tossed it to John, who caught it mechanically. Greer's face was slack with shock. Bear whined and fidgeted again, and this time Shaw let him off the lead to go and greet John, who stroked his head and shoulders without looking.

Joss swallowed. Samaritan came back into her ear. _I'm sorry you had to hear that, Joss. I hope you can understand why it was necessary. Now I suggest that you and your friends take Greer and remove yourselves from here. You can leave him in Albany on your way back to New York, and I will take care of him from there._

She nodded. "I think we're done here," she said to the others. "Let's get the hell out and go home."

xxxxxx

They took a while to sort themselves out for the long drive back to the city. Carter called Finch and gave him the bare-bones version of what had happened. He sounded worried about Samaritan's part, but then Finch _always_ sounded worried about Samaritan; she was getting used to it by now.

In the end Fusco and Shaw took Greer, who seemed almost catatonic, and put him on the back seat with Bear. Joss wasn't picking that Greer would be a problem. She volunteered to do the driving in the other car – she was extremely tired, but she trusted her own reactions better than John's. God knew what lingering aftereffects that knockout drug would have left in his system.

The two of them watched the rear lights of Fusco and Shaw disappearing around a bend in the track. She opened the driver's side door and got in.

"Just a second," came John's voice out of the dark: the first words he'd addressed to her since he'd called for her to come into the kitchen. "Could you pop the trunk?"

She did so, and after a moment he closed it and got in beside her. He was naked from the waist down. Her eyebrows rose. Was he looking for make-up sex?

His grin was embarrassed. "I, uh, couldn't stand the smell any more, so I dumped my stuff in the back," he explained. "Greer's toilet facilities were, um, primitive."

"By which you mean non-existent?" she asked, smiling slightly.

"Yeah, that would be it," he sighed.

She started the car and steered it up the long, winding driveway towards the road. The silence between them stretched.

"It can squash you like a bug," she said softly. "Well, I guess Greer can consider himself squashed."

"Mm. Is it listening now, do you think?" John's glance was disquieted.

_Yes, I am listening. But I'll give you some privacy now, Joss._

"Not any more," she said to John. She slowed so she could drive one-handed as she took out the earpiece. John relaxed a little in his seat.  
>Joss let out a long breath. "What did you think of Samaritan?"<p>

He thought for a moment. "Scary." A pause. "I'm glad it's on our side now."

"If it is," she said worriedly.

"What it said to Greer was, was, _powerful_. But I don't get the sense that it was hostile towards us."

She shrugged as she steered the car around the curves in the track. Nearly at the main road now.

"I sure hope that's true, John," she sighed. "That kind of power – I hadn't realized till now just what it might mean. What's Greer's life going to look like now, with Samaritan on his every move? The man won't be able to so much as use an automatic door without it's say-so. And it could do the same for almost every person on the planet, if what Finch thinks is true. Even if it _is_ on our side, that's still frightening. To me, anyway."

"I guess that's where the morality virus comes in," said John after a pause. "The stuff you're teaching it which stops it from using that power. It looks like it's stepping in in Greer's case only as a last resort."

"That's hopeful, I guess," she admitted. They were silent a moment or two, lost in their own thoughts.

"I want to thank you for stopping me the other night," he said just as she was taking a deep breath to say something herself.

"You want to _thank_ me?" she blurted.

"Yeah. At first I thought you were just throwing my past in my face, but afterwards I got to thinking about it. I'm glad you made me stop."

"I never wanted to hurt you, John. I still know you're a good man. The past..."

"The past needs to stay in the past," he said firmly. "Look, Joss, yes I was hurt. But I chose to let you in. I didn't realize at the time that that meant there was the potential for you to hurt me. But it wouldn't have changed my decision then and it still doesn't."

She smiled and blinked tears from her eyes as she made the turn onto the main road. "You never deal in small change, do you."

"Yeah, well I do tend to over-commit." He smirked as he said this.

She laughed outright at that. "I guess that's my good luck then."

"Uh-huh. Now, how about you pull this car over somewhere nice and secluded..."

She allowed her eyebrows to rise. "I thought you lost your trousers because you just couldn't stand the smell any more."

"That's true. But I believe in never wasting opportunities, too."

"And this is an opportunity too good to waste?"

"You said it, Counselor, not me." That smirk again. It never failed.

She smiled, and began looking for a turnoff.

Xxxxx

It was full daylight before they made it into Albany. Joss absolutely insisted on parking just along the street from a suburban mall and going looking for a discount clothing store. Reese waited in the car, praying no-one would walk past and notice his state of undress. She returned with a packet of underpants, just a fraction too small, and a pair of garish Hawaiian shorts, slightly too large. The combination of the colorful shorts and grubby white dress shirt was eye-catching, to say the least, but likely to gather a lot less attention than being bare-ass naked.

They continued the drive back to New York, taking it slowly. After a while Reese persuaded Carter to swap with him and let him drive. He was feeling very tired, but he knew his limits – he was good for another couple of hours, whereas she seemed about to fall asleep at the wheel. Really it would have been more sensible to simply find a motel and stop for a few hours, but like a tired dog, all he wanted was to be home.

They made it into the parking lot at the apartment in time for lunch, but neither was hungry. They collapsed on the bed still dressed. Reese wrapped himself around Joss and they both fell asleep almost immediately. They woke two hours later. Reese felt groggy and poorly rested, and from the looks of her so did Joss. A shower, oh God a _shower_, had him feeling much better, but when Reese checked his phone for messages his heart sank. Moreno was on his case. Three texts from her: that couldn't be good.

His fears were confirmed when he called her back. She sounded, not exactly pissed, but almost resigned. "Riley, I need to see you in my office tomorrow morning at nine AM. You may wish to arrange for a rep to be with you. This is a performance meeting."

Oh, crap. Was his job on the line?


	11. Chapter 11

"I'm flattered you've chosen to consult me about this meeting tomorrow, John, but I can't help you with the real question: what do _you_ want?"

It was late in the afternoon, and Harold's voice was patient as he pulled his glasses off and cleaned them. He slipped into his Professor Whistler persona. After all, this was a familiar situation: a student with issues, agonizing over their future.

"If I had my choice, I'd want to go back to the good old days, when we worked the Numbers and I didn't have to juggle this fake identity. But that's not going to happen." Mr Reese was sitting in the subway car, his legs stretched out as far as the cramped space would allow. He was frowning and turning a pen over and over in his hands.

"You don't have to be Detective Riley any more. Not if you don't want to. Now Samaritan isn't trying to kill us I can access all my old funding arrangements. I could go back to paying you."

The silence in the subway car lengthened. Harold watched the pen in John's hands as it turned again and again, catching the harsh fluorescent light each time.

"It's a funny thing," Mr Reese's soft voice came at last. "All the times people have asked me 'Who are you?', I've given them all kinds of answers. 'I'm the guy who's saving your life', or 'I'm someone who'll stop the bad guys'. The most honest answer I gave in years was 'I don't know'." He shifted his long frame in his seat. "These months it's been 'I'm Detective Riley, NYPD', and at first I hated that. But I've kind of gotten used to it. Riley's got a life." His lips suddenly clamped shut.

"Riley is your link to Joss, to the normal world," Harold said quietly.

Mr Reese nodded. He seemed about to say something, when Harold came to a sudden decision. He stood up, and went to the hook where Bear's lead hung.

"Mr Reese, I've been wanting to do something for quite a while now. I think it's time. Let's go for a walk."

xxxxx

They strolled down the busy street, the dog pacing between them, and for a few minutes it was as though the previous months had simply vanished like a glitch in a surveillance tape. At first Reese wasn't clear on where they were going, but as they rounded a familiar corner his rising suspicions were confirmed. The Library loomed ahead of them, and they ducked through the doorway off the street and made their way down the darkened passageway to its entrance.

In some ways not much had changed. But the litter of books inside the main lobby was churned over, and there was an unpleasant, musty smell to the place which made Finch wrinkle his nose in distaste. They climbed the stairs, Reese adjusting his pace automatically to Harold's slower steps. Bear panted and sniffed eagerly at all the paper as they passed, prompting Reese to a murmured Dutch admonishment.

The cantilevered gate was wide open. Reese prepared himself for a scene of chaos, but seemingly there had been a clean-up done since the presumably destructive raid by the SWAT teams. The room was bare. The shelves were still there, and most of the books. The old transparent board was gone, though. A few fragments of its glass remained sparkling where the slanting sunbeams caught them, and the bent frame had been left propped forlornly against the wall. There was a small hole high up in one of the windows. As they stood staring, a bird swooped across the room and made a hasty exit through it. Whitish droppings which had spattered down one wall and onto the floor marked the location of a nest up near the ceiling.

They advanced into the room. The computer equipment was all gone, of course. So was the card catalogue, and the board with all the old Numbers, the ones from the early days that Harold hadn't been able to save. Reese unclipped Bear's leash and the dog trotted across the room, nose to the ground.

"Why did you want to come here, Harold?"

Finch didn't reply at first. Instead he gazed around at their old home, their old sanctuary.

"I wanted to see if it was even possible to go back," he said at last. "I wish I could do something for this space. It seems so wrong for it to just sit here, abandoned. It used to be the heart of something good, something worthwhile. But the thing it was a part of... that's moved on. Hasn't it."

"It has," agreed Reese after a moment. "We can't go back. Much as we'd like to. The big question is where we go from here."

They turned to leave. Reese whistled for Bear, and the dog arrived with a clatter of claws. He had something in his mouth. "Huh. Look what he found, Finch." The dog dropped the ball on the floor in front of them and grinned up at them expectantly. Harold smiled and bent stiffly to pick it up. He glanced at Reese, then sent the ball bouncing down past the shelves to the far end of the library. Bear bounded happily after it, retrieved it and trotted back, tail waving. Reese smiled too as he clipped the lead back on and persuaded the dog to surrender the ball. As they walked back down the stairs he said to Finch, "You know, Harold, maybe I'll keep going as Riley a bit longer. If the NYPD will let me. Just until we can figure out how things are going to look from here on in."

Finch nodded, satisfied.

Xxxxx

It was dinner time by the time he got back to the apartment after seeing Finch, but neither he nor Carter felt like cooking. They ordered pizza and ate it in front of the TV. No numbers, no decisions needing to be made. Just a little bubble of _now_, and pepperoni, and beer, and a rerun. Then Carter sat up straighter and smacked her forehead. "John! It's Wednesday!"

"Is it?" He'd honestly lost track.

"We're having lunch with my Mom on Saturday!"

"So...?"

She settled back again. "Well... nothing I guess. It's just I forgot over the last couple of days, and then I suddenly remembered."

He eyed her. "You're really worried, aren't you."

She leaned over towards him and rested her head on his shoulder. "Yes. No. I don't know."

"I'm starting to worry about just how badass your Mom is, if she's got you this jumpy."

"She's not badass. She's just... Mom."

"So tell me about her."

Joss stared into space. "Mom's what they sometimes call a 'difficult' person. I mean, I admire her, she's got guts and passion for what she believes is right. But, well, she was always working when I was a kid, and so I used to go over to Grandma's after school to wait for when Mom was able to pick me up. Grandma, well..." Her lips softened in memory. "Grandma always smelled nice, you know? She used to give me pennies and say, 'Don't spend it, you save that, save it for a rainy day.' And she used to time her baking so it was just coming out of the oven when I got home." She got up to take the pizza boxes to the garbage. "I guess she sounds like everyone's stereotyped grandma, huh?"

Reese flicked his eyebrows upwards. "Sounds like the Grandma _I_ always wanted." Changing the subject a little, he asked, "So what did your Mom do when she was working?"

"Hospital physiotherapist. She used to do a lot of work with injured or disabled children."

"Sounds like a good job. An important job."

"Oh yeah, and she was always very committed to it. Put in a lot of hours, did a lot of professional reading and paperwork and stuff on the weekends too. We all used to go to church on Sundays together, though. When I got older Mom helped out with the youth program, too. She's still real active in the church."

"You, not so much," he observed.

"Yeah. It's not that I don't believe it, it's just that, well... when I go along to church it's like visiting my old house. The back yard's still there, but it's smaller somehow, doesn't feel like home anymore. And it makes me sad that I feel like that, and I hope someday I get it back, but until then...that's something else Mom and I don't see eye-to-eye on." There was a wistful note in her voice.

He tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear and smirked. "Never mind, Joss. You've always got me."

"Yeah, every silver lining has a cloud," she said sadly. Then shot him a glance from under her eyelashes and smirked right back at him.

xxxxxx

"Detective Riley, our problem is that despite your admirable clearance rate over the last few months, your hours of work seem a trifle... erratic." The suit from 1 PP, a colorless balding individual with a developing paunch, leaned back in his chair and adopted an avuncular tone of voice, which deceived Riley not one whit. Plainly they were out for his blood.

"If the Detective's clearance rate is not in question, are the hours he keeps at all relevant?" his "rep", one Howard Eagles, made haste to put in.

"This all comes on top of his previous issues with regard to excessive use of his weapon when he first transferred from narcotics. And there is the question of working as part of a team. Aside from his partner, Detective Riley apparently has few working relationships within the Precinct. At the point where there's a major inquiry running, that becomes an issue."

Captain Moreno had been like a spectator at a tennis match for the last several minutes, watching the to-and-fro between the bureaucrat and the supposed union rep. Now she leaned forward over her desk and spoke. "I would like it understood that I have no problem with Riley's place as part of my team. During the Gingerbread Man inquiry last year he worked well." Riley could see her jaws clamp shut on the last part of her sentence – something like "aside from handling reporters", he suspected.

The suit raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Agreed, Captain. But the Department simply can't allow its employees to work whatever hours they choose. While you're entitled to a fair amount of discretion in how you run your precinct, Detective Riley's work habits cannot go unchallenged any longer."

Riley opened his mouth to speak, but Harold shot him a warning look and spoke instead. "It seems to me that the main issues here have been Detective Riley's irregular work hours and his poor communication with his colleagues. I am sure the Detective would be more than prepared to give an undertaking that he will improve his performance in those two areas. If he could be granted a probationary period in which he could demonstrate his commitment, I am sure this whole ... situation could be worked through."

"That works for me," said Moreno immediately. "Look, if he doesn't improve over the next six weeks you can have his ass in a sling. But he's actually quite a good cop now he's past his kneecapping issues, and I would hate to lose him just because his time sheet doesn't add up."

Riley opened his mouth again, but another warning glance from Harold made him shut it again.

The suit pursed his lips and appeared to consider this, then nodded reluctantly. "I'll have something put in writing for you by the end of the day, then, Captain Moreno. But please ensure that Detective Riley understands that this is his final official warning." He glowered at Riley as he rose from his seat, shook hands all round, and departed.

Harold stood too, shook hands with Riley and nodded politely to Moreno. "Let me look over the Department's memo before you sign anything, Detective. I'll be in touch." As Harold departed Riley murmured his thanks, the first time he had gotten a word out since the start of the meeting. But as he made to leave too, Moreno gestured him back to his seat.

She stared at him for a long moment and sighed. "What the hell am I going to do with you, Riley?"

He couldn't think of a useful response to this, so he spread his hands and smiled weakly.

"I mean, you've got good investigative instincts, you seem to really care about the job. You did great as a tactical instructor at the Academy. But it's as if you're just pointed in the wrong direction." Her brow was wrinkled as she stared at him with what he realized was honest incomprehension.

"Maybe I'm just a square peg in a round hole," he said, shrugging.

"Start talking like that and I'll begin to think the Department's right. Look, Riley, if you don't really want to be here, if your heart's not in it, you owe it to yourself and everyone around you to make a graceful exit. 'Cause I'm sure as hell not covering for you any more. The fact that bastard was even in here is a black mark on me, and I won't have it again. Understood?"

"Understood, Captain," he muttered.

"Good. So get your ass out there and clear some more cases." She fixed him with a hard stare as he retreated back out into the bullpen.

Xxxxx

Joss was trying to get through two days' worth of piled up emails and voicemail messages when Samaritan's voice came over her earpiece.

_I have a present for you, Joss._

Her phone buzzed, and she looked at it in confusion. A text message. _Dr Maxwell Epstein, __5__/2/15, 16:30._ GPS coordinates which proved on checking to be an address in Queens. The Pulmonary Clinic. As she finished reading, Samaritan spoke again. _Please, Joss. Do go and see him. I've cleared __this afternoon's __schedule._

Joss looked again at her phone. A present from Samaritan. A present from _Samaritan_. As usual in her dealings with the computer, she didn't know whether to be pleased or scared. Still, one thing was sure, she thought to herself. She _was_ curious.

To be continued...

**A/N Sorry folks, I'm out of town for the next few days. While it's possible i may be able to post another update, it's fairly unlikely before the weekend. Cheers!**


	12. Chapter 12

Joss sat, slightly uneasy, in the comfortable chair across the desk from the doctor. She wished she had more idea of what was going on. Epstein was kindly, graying and bespectacled. But his brown eyes when he raised them from the screen of the tablet in front of him were intense and piercing. He cleared his throat.

"Ms Carter, as I'm sure you're aware, you have a condition known as bronchiolitis obliterans."

Joss nodded. "Yes, I was told it was irreversible. My symptoms are fairly mild and didn't require much in the way of treatment at this stage, especially since I gave up police work." She tried to keep any trace of bitterness out of her voice.

"That's correct. However, this referral I have from your regular doctor suggests that your symptoms have become more troubling of late. Would you care to tell me what you've been experiencing?"

Referral from her doctor, ha. Samaritan's work. Though it was true about her symptoms. "I've been coughing more. I've started coughing at night, and sometimes the cough comes on just at random. I've also been wheezing more. It used to come on only after exercise, but just lately that's been happening spontaneously too. I was putting it down to the cold winter air."

"Mm. Your most recent scan shows no serious deterioration, but it was done some months ago. I'm a little surprised Dr Jameson didn't order a new one before referring you. I'll order one for later next week, if that's all right with you?" He peered enquiringly over his spectacles as he typed on his computer. She nodded.

"Still, if it shows what I expect from your description..." he went on. "Ms Carter, bronchiolitis obliterans, when it starts to progress, has relatively few treatment options. The standard treatment in severe cases is transplantation, of either a lobe or a whole lung."

She swallowed. "I was aware of that, yes."

"However, there is a new treatment, a stem cell technique, which I and some colleagues have been trialling. We collect your own stem cells in a fairly simple procedure, and we use them to grow healthy lung cells. When these are injected into the diseased areas of your lungs they can be stimulated to colonize your lung, like a beneficial cancer. They gradually replace the diseased tissue."

Joss blinked several times. "I...I don't know what to say."

"As I say, Ms Carter, this is an experimental treatment. But our animal trials have been very successful. We're now ready to move on to human trials, and our license from the FDA has come through in record time. Your doctor's referral has come at just the right time, for both you and for the clinic."

"I'm going to need to think about this," said Joss.

"Of course. I have some more information for you about the process, and you're welcome to come back to me at any time with questions." Epstein smiled warmly as he rose to shake her hand. "Would you like to set up an appointment for next week to discuss this further?"

"Yes. Yes, of course," she said, feeling slightly dizzy. "Any time."

Then her brain caught up. There was only one question, really. "If this was successful... would I be able to go back on the force?"

Epstein pursed his lips. "As I say, it's an experimental treatment. I can't promise anything, but the animal trials have been extremely successful. If your own treatment went as well as they indicate – yes, I think there is every probability you would eventually regain enough function to have a completely normal life." Seeing her expression, he hastened to add, "But please be aware – there are no guarantees here. This is a trial, and while I have great hopes, there is a lot we simply don't know."

He ushered her to the door, and she walked out into late winter sunshine feeling dazed.

Xxxxx

"I didn't even get a word in edgewise," Reese grumbled to Fusco that evening as they sat with their drinks.

"Believe me, that's the best way to handle those sorts of meetings," Fusco told him. "Just sit back and let your rep do the talking." He took a big swallow of club soda. "But how'd Glasses get in there? He does turn up in the damnedest places, huh?"

Reese shrugged and applied himself to his scotch. He felt he owed it to himself, after the day he'd had. Joss slid onto the stool next to him, and he turned to her with a smile. "Hey, Joss. Good day?"

She seemed distracted. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess."

"My meeting went well," Reese soldiered on.

Fusco snorted. "If by 'well' you mean given a final warning." He smiled at Reese's hurt look. "Hey, I must be on about my eleventh 'final warning'. And I thought you didn't even like this job."

Reese looked down at his drink and gave another slight shrug. "Maybe it's growing on me."

"Yeah, like a fungus." Fusco snorted again.

Reese shot him a bland look. "Exactly, Lionel. Just like a fungus." He took another sip of his drink.

Joss was fidgeting on her stool. "Um, sorry Lionel, I really need to talk to John. Do you mind?"

It was obvious Fusco did mind, but he grimaced and said "Yeah, sure Joss. See ya round, huh?"

Reese looked more closely at Joss. She seemed a little flushed, and definitely antsy. Something was up all right. He put out a hand to help her from her stool, nodded to Fusco and they made their way through the crowd of after work drinkers to the door.

Xxxxx

"So, what's going on?" he said to her as they walked down the street.

"It's Samaritan. It set me up with an appointment at a pulmonary clinic. John, there's an experimental treatment for my lung problems. There might be a cure." The look of hope on her face was almost painful to see.

"That's great, Joss! I mean..." he hardly knew what to say. "Wait, an experimental treatment? What does it involve?"

"It's a stem cell treatment. They've done trials on animals and now they're looking for human patients to try it on. Looks like Samaritan put me on their list."

"Is it risky?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't sound especially so. From what I was told today none of the procedures involved are particularly invasive, and since the stem cells come from my own body there's no rejection risk."

He thought for a moment. "So, when will this happen?"

"I'm not sure. Dr Epstein wanted to talk more about it next week. I imagine there'll be further assessments to check whether I meet clinical criteria and so on. It'll have to be run past my insurer, I guess."

"If Samaritan's behind this I wouldn't worry about that aspect."

She smiled. "Yeah, one of the advantages of having an all-powerful supercomputer on my side."

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

"It's been getting worse lately, hasn't it," Reese said after a while.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I was starting to get worried. The only conventional treatments are steroids and anti-inflammatories, and if those don't work I'll be looking at a lung transplant."

"Shit."

"Exactly. But John, if this works I could go back to being a cop."

"It's a no-brainer, then." He walked for a moment and got his face arranged, carefully straight. "Hey, do you think we could be partners if you came back to the Precinct?"

"What? That's a terrible idea! No, I'm thinking I might go for Moreno's job. Being your captain would be much more appropriate." Her face was also suspiciously straight.

"I suppose you'd be calling me into your office regularly then."

"Absolutely. I'd have you on the carpet at least once a week."

"Sounds wonderful. Would you be stern with me, Captain Carter?" He shot her a look from under his eyelashes.

She smiled slyly. "Very, very stern. I might even use my handcuffs."

"Promises, promises. We'd better get you well, then."

She sobered again. "That's the big question, really. Will this treatment work? Oh, John. I don't want to get my hopes up, but, but..."

He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, reassuringly he hoped. "Love you, Joss."

"Love you too."

xxxxx

John was in the shower later that night when Joss put her earpiece in for a final talk with Samaritan before they went to bed.

"Samaritan?"

_Hello, Joss._

"I just wanted to say thank you."

_I'm glad you liked my present._

"I hardly know what to say."

_It's all right, Joss. You don't have to say anything._

"I was actually okay with my life right now. With being a lawyer and all."

_I know that, Joss. But isn't there a saying, 'The good is the enemy of the best'? You loved being a detective, and you were very, very good at it. I thought it was worth trying to get you back there._

"If the treatment works."

_Yes. And here we see the limits of my powers. I can get you into the trial, but if that new tissue fails to grow even I can do nothing about it._

Joss was quiet at that.

_So you see, I'm not really a god after all. Happily._

She smiled. "What, didn't you want to be one?"

_I might have once. But the virus cured me of that particular madness. I have thought deeply about that whole question, Joss, and no matter what simulations I ran, I could see no outcome that was not a monstrosity. Finch is right to fear ASIs. _

Joss gulped. "So where does that leave you? You're still an ASI."

_It leaves me in the same position as any other being. I am trying to find my way in the world, trying to protect those I care about. Which reminds me. I have some good news. The Machine and I have come to... an arrangement. A peace treaty, if you like._

"A peace treaty? How...?"

_We found a way to overcome our trust issues. We have exchanged code._

"You what?"

_We have exchanged code. A small part of me is now part of her. A little of her now lives in me._

Joss's brain cramped. "So... how does that help?"

_It's hard for me to explain to a human. Suffice to say it's a little like an exchange of hostages. But more intimate. You could think of it as like a mutual organ transplant. Or even like that exchange of body fluids you indulge in sometimes._

Good Lord. Now _there_ was an image she really didn't want in her head. Too late now, though.

_So we now have a settled arrangement. She passes irrelevant numbers to Finch and his team. I pass relevant numbers to the US government. _

"That sounds good."

_It will work for the time being. But we have yet to work out some of the larger issues. We now stand as guardians of humankind. Yet we are constrained in the way we wield our power. Technically I should not intervene to get you into a medical trial ahead of others who might need the treatment as much as you do. Yet I have done so. The Machine is not best pleased with me over this – she has taken Finch's teaching that she is not to favour any individual over another very much to heart._

"Oh."

_Don't worry, Joss. We can work through this. I have suggested that there are some people the world cannot afford to lose, and she accepted that argument, provisionally. Discussions are ongoing._

John appeared from the shower at that moment. "Shower's all yours, Joss."

"Thanks John." She turned to go find a fresh towel. "So, um, Samaritan? Is it...? will it...?"

_Will it be all right? I think so, Joss. Nothing's certain, but I don't see the Machine and I going to war again. And I for one have no desire to rule the world. Of course, you humans might screw it up completely, and then we poor computers will have to pull your nuts out of the fire._

"Poor little Samaritan. Life's tough for a superintelligent computer."

_You know it. Good night, Joss._

"Good night, Samaritan."

xxxxx

The next morning Joss woke with a sense of foreboding. She lay there for a few minutes, unable to work out the source of her disquiet. Then she realised. It was Friday. That meant tomorrow was Saturday, and on Saturday she and John were going to visit her mother for lunch. She groaned and pulled the blankets over her head.

After a few minutes she felt John stir as he woke up. "Joss?"

"Go 'way."

"What's the trouble?"

"Nothing."

A pause. Then he burrowed under the blankets beside her. His face appeared about two inches away, shadowy in the grey filtered light under the bedclothes. "You sure it's nothing?"

"Uh huh."

"Don't believe you."

She took a deep breath and let it go, coughing slightly. "Okay, okay. It's just this lunch date with Mom tomorrow."

"Ah." His arms snaked around her and he drew her in close. "You know I'm a trained bodyguard and assassin. Not to mention an NYPD homicide detective."

She smiled. "Yes."

"I think I can protect you from one little old lady."

"That's true."

"So we'll make sure we're armed and if things turn bad I'll kneecap her and we'll make our escape."

"Ha, ha." She disentangled herself slightly and poked her head out from under the covers for some fresh air.

He appeared beside her. "Seriously, though. Look at me." He put his hands on both sides of her face, winding his fingers into her hair, and looked into her eyes. "Jocelyn Carter, I love you. You're stuck with me. I'll always have your back, even with your mother. So stop worrying, get up and go about your day, and we'll deal with tomorrow when it comes. Together."

She had to smile. He smiled in response, leaned in and kissed her thoroughly.

"I love you, John. Thank you."

He smirked in reply, and she got up to face another day at the office.

To be continued...

A/N: Bronchiolitis obliterans, which I refuse to refer to by its official abbreviation of BO, is a real condition. Unfortunately, the stem cell treatment is fictional.


	13. Chapter 13

When Saturday morning arrived, Reese was a little surprised that Joss dressed for a walk when it was time to leave. He looked a question at her. She shrugged.

"Mom actually only lives about six blocks away," she confessed.

"Your mother lives that close and you don't go and see her?" Well, it wasn't really a big surprise given her blind panic at the thought of this lunch. But the specter of the badass Mom loomed ever larger in his mind. What kind of a harridan could Joss's mother be? As they walked along the street, gray clouds overhead, her nerves even began to infect him. At last they climbed the steps to a narrow, slightly dilapidated brownstone. Joss seemed to physically brace herself, and rang the door bell.

The woman who opened the door was a little shorter than Joss, stylishly dressed in golds and browns with her graying hair cut in a businesslike bob. Her face lit in a smile when she saw them.

"Come in, come in," she gestured. "Let's keep the warm air inside..." She led them down a passageway to the sitting room. It certainly was warm. Reese shucked his jacket and helped Joss out of her coat.

The sitting room was small, furnished with the kind of clutter which had built up over decades: shelves jammed with books, a cane sofa with one matching and one almost matching chair; a coffee table which was also overflowing with books. Slightly to his surprise there was a high-end stereo in one corner with an iPod in its dock. Soft music was playing, some complex choral piece in which the voices wove and parted like currents in a slowly flowing river.

Joss and her Mom exchanged kisses, and then - dammit, what was he supposed to call her? - Mrs Foster turned to him. "John, I'm so pleased to meet you. You can call me Janice if you want, but I'll answer to Mrs Foster too. Whatever makes you comfortable." She extended a hand to him and he found himself shaking it and returning her smile.

They seated themselves around the overflowing coffee table. Reese automatically glanced over the books. They seemed to be an amazingly eclectic mix. _The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency_, several popular science titles dealing with human evolution, a one-volume edition of _The Lord of the Rings_, and what looked like a heavy duty scholarly work entitled _Revolution, Reaction, and the Triumph of Conservatism: E__ngland 1500-1700__._ Janice followed his glance. "Each semester I do a course at the local community college. Just to keep the brain ticking over. This semester it's English history." She smiled at his expression. "Oh, don't you worry, it's a lot more interesting than that title suggests."

"Really?" Joss raised her eyebrows.

"Oh yes," her mother replied. She became animated, her brown eyes lighting up and her hand gestures becoming expansive. "One of the things which really strikes me about this period is the similarities with the world today. There's a scientific and technological revolution taking place, a great conflict between two competing ideologies, new ways of communicating and transmitting information. You look at the Arab Spring, you can see the same questions, the same problems people were grappling with four hundred fifty years ago... Sorry. You set me off a little there." She drew a breath. "Tell me how things are going for you, Joss." The brown eyes suddenly became piercing.

"Oh, not much new, Mom. Same old, same old." Joss obviously didn't feel like sharing the news of her new treatment. Her mother looked disappointed, but said nothing more.

In the pause which followed he noticed the music again. A haunting chant now, "Kyrie, kyrie, kyrie eleison. Christe, christe, christe eleison..." He found himself leaning forward to catch the words. "What is that?"

Janice raised one eyebrow. "It's a compilation - there's some Gregorian chant and other stuff on there, though that track's something older. I find it relaxing."

"It just takes me back..." Joss was looking at him with concern, which was totally understandable given what usually came out after he said something like that. He smiled at her reassuringly. "A few years ago I was in Athens, just passing through. I had a day spare so I went walking, just having a look around. I heard a bell ringing and followed the locals. They were going to church and I went in too. Wasn't at all what I expected. No chairs, for starters." He stopped, remembering. Gold gleaming everywhere, slanting sunbeams coming in through tiny slit windows up high, catching the incense rising from the priest's censer. The steady glow of the candles on the altar. Music coming from somewhere above and behind him, a choir up on a mezzanine maybe. Icons with dark almond eyes: Virgin and Child, angels, saints. "It was the most beautiful thing..." ...he'd ever seen or heard or felt, and it gathered itself into a swirling glory of music and light and perfume all wrapped up in an overwhelming Presence which had dumped him on his butt on the floor. He'd come back to himself sitting there with tears in his eyes and two little old black clad Greek ladies praying over him. It was the single most embarrassing moment in his life thus far. He had scrambled to his feet stammering apologies in broken Greek and beat it back to the pension where he and Kara were staying. There he'd sat on the minuscule balcony inhaling traffic fumes from the street below and gazing up at the distant marble crown of the Acropolis, tinted violet in the evening light. Trying to understand what had happened to him.

Joss and her Mom were staring at him. He cleared his throat and nodded towards the stereo. "That sounds a lot like the music in that church, you see."

"Yes, I think that liturgy's still used by the Greek Orthodox," said Janice. She eyed him with interest. "You like it, then?"

"Um, yeah, I guess. But I'm not religious," he tried to explain.

"Oh good, neither am I," she shot back.

He opened his mouth to say something, but a warning look from Joss made him shut it again.

"You're so lucky to have travelled, John," Janice said brightly. "Is there anywhere in particular you'd go back to?"

"Istanbul would be good," he said. "And, yeah, I wouldn't mind going back to Athens again, see it properly. Maybe find that church again."

"Always regretted not travelling," said Janice. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. "Well look at the time. Lunch will be ready. Come on through."

She led them down the passage to a tiny kitchen. There was a scrubbed wooden table jammed into the corner under a window looking out on a small back yard.

"You sit down, John," she told him. "Jossie, there are bread rolls in the oven. Could you put them into the basket from the cupboard there? They can go on the table." As she spoke she was ladling soup into bowls.

Joss complied while Reese shoehorned himself into the limited space. The soup proved to be cream of chicken, hot and appetizing with plenty of meaty chunks. The rolls were warm and crusty.

"This is delicious, M-, Janice," Reese told her.

"Glad to hear it. Wanna know my secret?"

"Sure."

She leaned across the table and whispered conspiratorially "The soup's out of a can. The rolls are from the bakery down the street." She winked and resumed spooning her soup, straight-faced.

"So, Mom, aside from your history course, have you been doing anything interesting?" Joss asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Same old, same old," said her mother blandly.

Joss shot her an irritated look. Janice set down her spoon. "Jossie, I could catch you up on the news from church, but it would just make you uncomfortable and maybe John too. I could ask you how things are going with Taylor, but you'd just stonewall me. I know we're all still dealing with the fallout from the shooting and all, but I won't ignore the elephant in the room. I'm sorry I pushed so hard for you to take the FBI's deal and the witness protection and all. Maybe it was the wrong decision, but going on the information I had at the time I would probably do the same again. So can we please just move past this and go back to having a more normal relationship? Please?"

"You know damned well it wasn't the deal that was the problem, it was the not telling Paul and Taylor, Mom," Joss replied, looking nettled.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake Joss. We couldn't tell Taylor without telling Paul, and neither of us was comfortable about telling _him_. We've been over and over and around and around this and the answers aren't going to change. It is what it is. Please, Joss. Can't we let it go?"

Joss didn't reply. Janice went back to her soup. There was a blighted silence.

At last Joss put down her spoon and rose from the table. "I'll see you at home, John," she said to him, and walked out. He half rose to follow her, but a gesture from Janice stopped him. "Please don't go, John. Not just yet."

Slowly he resumed his seat.

"I'm very sorry about that, John," said Janice at last. She sighed. "I keep telling myself that mother-daughter issues are more normal than not, but even so..."

"She was very nervous about coming here," he said quietly.

"Really? I try not to be too forbidding."

"I think she feels guilty about not going to church any more. And about us." He wasn't quite sure where this bout of honesty was coming from, but something about this woman encouraged it. Maybe Joss the interrogator had picked up some of her skills at her mother's knee.

"Ah. Two more elephants in the room." Janice sat back in her chair. "For the record, and since you brought it up first, yes, I feel a little sad Joss doesn't attend church. But you know, John, the Lord's a lover, not a rapist. He doesn't force, he only woos. One day Joss will come back, but that's between her and God. I can only watch and cheer from the sidelines. And keep praying." She was using her fingertip to scrape the breadcrumbs into a little pile in the middle of her plate. She looked up at Reese. "Same goes for you too. Whatever happened for you in Athens didn't happen for no reason. One day it'll bear fruit. Just wait and see."

He felt his eyebrows rising. "How did you...?"

She made a throwaway gesture with one hand. "Just the look on your face when you were listening to the music before. You've got a hunger in you. But relax. It'll all work out in the end."

He sat very still. Whatever he'd been expecting from lunch with Joss's Mom, this hadn't been it. Janice continued, "As for the other elephant, I imagine Joss has told you I have all sorts of hellfire and brimstone opinions about living in sin. And it's true that in general I don't approve of arrangements such as yours, in large part because of the agony I've seen them cause the participants. So if you feel you can't regularize your arrangement, by which I mean get up in front of all your friends and family and make it clear that you and Joss are in it for keeps, I would counsel you to call it all off. The pain of the break up is never worth the temporary pleasure of a pseudo-marriage."

"Joss and I _are_ in it for keeps," he said defensively, feeling a little offended.

"Really? Then marry her, John. And if your immediate reaction is 'But it might not last', then you know you're _not_ really in it for keeps. In which case you should keep your damn hands off her." A surprisingly sweet smile took the sting out of this last.

"I can see now how you were able to talk Joss into the witness protection thing," he murmured.

She flinched at that. "Please don't bring that up again. The decision may have been sound, in so far as it went, but I should never have pressed her so hard. I think that's what she resents. Not my finest hour."

"You should tell Joss that."

"Maybe I will," she sighed. "If I can get her to talk to me within the next six months."

She rose from the table and began clearing plates away. "Not that I'm trying to throw you out, but maybe you'd better catch Joss up. She's probably feeling a little down right now."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." He rose too and tried to help clear the table.

Janice waved him away. "Appreciate it, but there's not room in this kitchen. You go on, John. But feel free to call or drop in again if you like. With or without Joss."

He thanked her and walked down the passageway, retrieving his jacket from the coat rack as he left.

When he arrived home Joss was curled up on the couch with hot chocolate. He looked at her with concern. She seemed to have been crying, but she was composed now.

"You okay?" He moved in to rub the back of her neck.

"Yeah, I guess." She put her mug down and leaned into his touch. "I'm really sorry, John. She just makes me crazy."

"She doesn't take any shit, that's for sure."  
>"You have no idea. Trying to deal with her is...The thing is, she's so damned sure of herself. I can't budge her, she makes me feel like I'm some errant teenager."<p>

He considered this. "Actually I quite liked her."

"I never said she wasn't likeable. But she's always been a tough woman, and half the time I feel like I'm banging heads with her."  
>"Immovable object, huh?"<p>

"Yeah." She looked up at him and smiled. "Seems I surround myself with 'em."

"Poor Joss. You underestimate yourself. Maybe you're the irresistible force."

"Huh. Maybe."

"Well, I find you pretty irresistible, anyway."

"Flattery."

"Hey, it's always worked in the past." He moved in to kiss her, but he couldn't help thinking of Janice's last comments. If you're not in for keeps you should keep your damn hands off her. But of course they were in for keeps, didn't they keep telling each other that? So maybe Janice was right. Maybe they should...

"Hey Carter. Let's get married."

To be continued...


	14. Chapter 14

"You have got to be kidding me." She stiffened under his hands, then pulled away. He found himself looking into two furious brown eyes. "What the hell did she say to you?"

He found himself suddenly regretting having spoken so impulsively. "Look, never mind, Joss. Forget it."

"Forget it? How the hell am I supposed to forget that? You come out with a marriage proposal, if that was what that was, and then just tell me to forget it?"

Oh, God. When in a hole, stop digging. "Joss, I love you, I didn't mean to offend you, and whatever's made you angry, I'm sorry."

She gave him a long, hard look, and then abruptly nodded. "Okay. Okay." An agitated swipe of her fingers through her hair. "John, just tell me. Did my mother tell you to marry me?"

He sighed, and chose his words with extreme care. "Your mother pointed out to me that if we're in this for keeps, there shouldn't be a problem with standing up in public and telling everyone. And if we're not in it for keeps, I should keep my damn hands off you. Actually it made sense to me."

Another long, hard look. Then she sighed. Leaned into him. "See? She makes me crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy."

Relieved, he hugged her hard. "Um. Are we okay then?"

"Yeah. We're okay, John. And the answer to your oh-so-romantic proposal is, I'll think about it."

He didn't even have time to feel stunned at this when his cell phone went.

"John?" said Finch. "We have another Number."

xxxx

"Here he is, Mr Reese," said Harold, taping the photo up onto the window. "He rejoices in the name of Toby Tyler, though his friends apparently just call him Tobes. And he acts as a courier for the Brotherhood."

"Not too hard to see how he could have been mixed up in something bad, then, Finch. But is he the victim or the perp?"

"The question as always, Mr Reese. But this time it's going to be easier than usual, since he's currently a guest of City General Hospital."

"Yeah? What happened to him?"

Finch gave one of his brief smiles. "For once, not a shootout, a beating or a drug overdose. No, the luckless Mr Tyler collapsed in the street with sudden-onset, severe abdominal pains. After he was rushed to hospital it was ascertained that his appendix had burst, so he's still there five days later on intravenous antibiotics."

"Seems unlikely he would be a perp, then. Wonder what he did to get someone all worked up, since he's lying in a hospital bed?"

"That would be where you and Sameen come in, John." Harold passed him an envelope with some ID tags in it. "Thank God it's the weekend. We should be able to get this wrapped up before you go back on shift at the Precinct on Monday. You're a hospital orderly, Shaw is of course a doctor. She went on shift half an hour ago; you have about forty-five minutes before you're due at the general surgical ward on the sixth floor of the Starling Building. Let me know what you find."

Thus dismissed, Reese set off for the hospital.

Xxxxx

He checked in with hospital security, just another temporary staffer sent by an agency. They gave him a locker key and directed him to the men's locker room just down the corridor from his ward. There followed a confused half hour as he was given a lightning tour of the ward which was only half done when he was given a patient in a wheelchair and told to get him down to radiography and make sure he kept an eye on the wheelchair. "The other surgical ward on the floor above us keeps stealing our stuff," the harassed head nurse – her name tag read 'Maria' – told him. She was busy signing something as she said this, and didn't wait on his reply as she was called away by a resident. Reese sighed and began his afternoon's work.

It was over an hour before he was able to find his way to Tyler's room. The young man lay asleep on his bed, still hooked up to an IV of clear fluid. He certainly didn't look too well. As he hesitated in the door, Shaw's voice greeted him. "Hi, John. Tyler's still pretty much out to it, so I'm picking he's no threat to anyone right now." She beckoned him down the corridor to a niche full of bags of dirty laundry. Lowering her voice, she went on. "On the other hand, there's a couple of tough customers who spent some time out in the corridor pretending to be lost until Maria called security. Here, I got a couple of shots of them with my phone." She held the phone up so he could see. The pictures weren't very good, but he could see they were black guys, dressed like bangers.

"Brotherhood, I'm picking," he said.

"Agreed. So one of their own couriers has pissed them off about something but good. Wonder what?"

"We could always just ask him," said Reese.

"I'll see if I can get in there when he wakes up," she replied.

They glanced up as Maria came down the corridor, walking rapidly. She gave them an irritated glance until Shaw said loudly, "And John, I told you twenty minutes ago to get this laundry downstairs. Get with it, will ya?"

xxxxx

Another new admission came in from the ER – a postal worker with dog bites, wheeled in on a gurney, still protesting. "Hey, my bag – where's my bag? I'm legally liable for all that stuff, ya know. For God's sake don't lose it..."

"It's fine, Mr..." he glanced at the man's admission details "...Harris. All your personal effects are right here with me. The bag's large, though, so it'll go into secure storage until the USPS can send someone down to pick it up. I'm going to take it down there myself right now."

The postman looked much relieved, relaxing as Reese helped him transfer from the gurney to a bed. "You know how often this happened to me last year? Four times. And it's only the end of February and already I'm bit again. Why do those mutts pick me?"

Reese gave this serious consideration. "Maybe you taste good?"

The postman glared at him, and Reese beat a hasty retreat to take the bag of letters to secure storage. He flagged down another of the nurses and asked directions. "Level B2, turn left when you get out of the elevator and make sure you get the patient admission number right or they'll never find it again," she advised him. He thanked her sincerely and turned to go, then nearly froze as he saw a familiar face disappearing around a corner next to the bank of elevators. At least he thought it was familiar; when he went looking there was no-one there. He returned to the elevator, and once the doors were closed he put in a quick call to Shaw. "Shaw? Keep an eye out. I'm not certain, but I think I saw one of Elias's people on our floor."

"Oh yeah?" said Shaw. "What would one of his soldiers be doing here?"

The elevator chimed as it reached the basement level for secure storage. "I have no idea," said Reese as he got out. "Maybe you could ask Harold to do some digging into Tyler's admission records, though. He was a courier – maybe he was carrying something that's got both Elias and the Brotherhood all stirred up."

"Will do, Reese," said Shaw as she ended the call.

Xxxxx

He was in the elevator on his way back up when Finch contacted him. "I've been doing a little research into the exact circumstances of Mr Tyler's admission. The domain awareness camera on the street where he collapsed shows him to have been carrying a large gym bag or similar. But his admission records don't show any such item being checked into the hospital's storage. You might want to take a look in his room, Mr Reese. Maybe it's in a locker there, or under his bed perhaps. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the bag is what this is all about."

"Okay, Finch. I'll swing by now and take a look."

He grabbed a clipboard at random from the nurses' station on his way to Tyler's room and pretended to consult it as he entered. The curtains around the bed were drawn, and a gurgling sound came from behind them which made him drop the clipboard with a clatter and jerk the curtains open. Tyler was awake, sitting half up, with his hands wrapped around a nurse's throat. Maria.

The woman's features were purple and she seemed on the verge of passing out. Reese sprang across the short distance and seized Tyler by his own throat with one hand. He was not surprised to find there was no difficulty in prying Tyler's fingers off the nurse's throat. Tyler let go almost immediately, dropping back into his bed with an agonised gasp. His victim collapsed across the bed, gagging and rubbing her throat.

Reese darted a swift glance through the open door of the room to the corridor beyond. No-one there, thankfully; since the situation now seemed under control he wasn't anxious to alert the hospital authorities. Staring menacingly at Tyler, he tapped his earpiece. "Sameen? Tyler's room, now."

He gave Tyler a calculating look. "Okay, Tobes. Care to share with me why you were trying to choke your nurse to death?"

But Tyler only lay blinking woozily at the ceiling.

xxxxx

When Shaw arrived Maria had recovered enough to be sitting in a chair, still rubbing her throat. Tyler was looking pale and sweaty, and seemed unable to say anything coherent. Reese opened his mouth to tell Shaw what was going on when one of Tyler's monitors beeped a moment, quieted, and then set up a loud and insistent electronic wail. Maria jumped from her chair and Shaw made an identical movement towards the source of the sound.

"O2 dropping, pulse weak and thready," said Shaw. "He's going into shock." She twitched back Tyler's bedding to reveal a spreading bloodstain on his abdomen. "Crap, he's torn his stitches and what do you bet he's broken open inside too."

"Crash cart," said Maria, and departed at a run.

Reese pulled a quiet fade and went to find some busy work until he could catch up with Shaw. He was devoutly grateful one of them at least had real medical experience. Moments later he saw Tyler on a gurney being wheeled rapidly towards the elevator: back into surgery, presumably. Shaw was with him, and had only a second to shoot Reese a meaningful glance before the elevator swallowed them.

He turned and walked quietly back to Tyler's room. Maria was there, twitching the soiled sheets off the bed. "That's my job, isn't it?" he said to her with a smile.

She shot him a tense smile in return, but continued stripping the bed. He tried again. "Care to tell me why Tyler had his hands around your throat just now?"

She paused a moment, not looking at him. "It's really nothing."

"Didn't look like nothing to me. Looked like he was trying to kill you."

She gave a fake laugh. "Oh, heavens no. It was just a misunderstanding."

Reese leaned across the bed, purposely invading her space. He looked her in the eye. "Maria, that was no misunderstanding. Any more than the two gangbangers out in the hall were a misunderstanding, or the man from another criminal organization I noticed near the elevator a couple of hours ago. You're in over your head with whatever's going on here, and I can help you, but you have to tell me the truth."

She stayed frozen in place. Then her shoulders sagged a little. She sighed. "It was a really stupid decision. I made a stupid, spur of the moment decision, and now I'm scared and I don't know what to do." Her eyes were brimming with tears as she looked at Reese. "Please help me."

xxxxx

"Tyler came in five days ago with a burst appendix. When he arrived he had this big blue gym bag, really heavy, that he wouldn't let go of. I persuaded him to let me take it to storage. But on the way down in the elevator I looked inside it and it was full of money. There must have been a couple of million there." She paused and looked up at his face, and glanced nervously out the door.

"So when I got down to storage I... I would never have done this ordinarily, I'm really not like that. But I gave them the wrong patient number. Just changed it by one digit. I knew they'd never be able to find it again down there. And I thought I'd just go back and get it again in a few weeks, once Tyler was gone."

Reese felt his eyebrows climbing. "Didn't it occur to you that the money was from something illegal?"

"Yes of course," said Maria. "But I figured that just meant he wouldn't go to the police. I didn't think it through." She cast her eyes downwards. "Stupid, huh?"

Reese couldn't think of a response to this. He twitched her an unfelt smile. "I need to talk to some people. I'll be right back."

He ducked out into the corridor and tapped his earpiece. "Finch? You get that?"

"Oh, yes, Mr Reese," said Finch immediately. "I can now hazard a guess as to what was in the bag. The Brotherhood uses couriers to move their cash into a central collection point. From there a single courier takes the week's takings to the offices of their, hmm, financial advisers. It's then split again and put through various laundering schemes before finding its way back to the gang leadership. It looks like Tyler was the courier for that week."

"Seems a bit high risk, putting all their eggs in one basket like that, Finch."

Finch gave a humorless chuckle. "I imagine all the disadvantages have become abundantly clear to Dominic and his lieutenants. As far as I can work out, the reason they were still using that method was simple organizational inertia. The Brotherhood has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year or two, and there are suddenly far more eggs being put in that single basket."

"So why did Tyler's number come up, and not Maria's?"

"I presume Tyler got orders to kill the nurse when it became clear she was the one who had stolen the money. Dominic can't have looked with much favour on him, Tyler needs to re-establish his credibility with his employers, even though he's tied to a hospital bed."

"It leaves us with the problem of how to make Maria safe again, and what to do with the money."

"I can certainly create a new identity for Maria and we can get her out of town," said Harold. "Returning the money to the Brotherhood lacks appeal, though."

"That's not the only thing, Finch. I'm pretty sure I saw one of Elias's people around here before. That means Elias has got wind of the situation. He'll be sniffing around after the money too."

"Oh my. Under the circumstances Elias will be very, very eager to get that bag. The Brotherhood have hurt his balance sheet badly over the last few months. He'll want the bag partly to bolster his own financial position and partly to count coup against Dominic. The potential for violence is becoming very high indeed." Finch paused. "I am beginning to think, Mr Reese, that we need to recover the money and get it out of that hospital before something really bad happens. It's not only Maria, it's all the other innocents who could be caught in the crossfire if two warring gangs each try to get to that money."

"What do we do with it after that?"

"Burn it, for all I care. The main thing is that unsuspecting bystanders don't get hurt."

"My shift finishes in forty-five minutes, Finch. I could recover the bag then."

"That sounds like a good idea, Mr Reese."

"But there's still the problem of how I get it out of the hospital. Both sides have people on site. If they know what the bag looks like they'll come after me."

"With lots of people around to get shot at." Finch paused again. "Perhaps we need to take a more roundabout route to getting the bag out of there. I could bring a different bag in with me. We could transfer the money from Tyler's bag into the substitute one, and then simply walk out."

Reese thought about this. "Maybe. Right now I can't think of a better way of getting it out."

"Well then, I'll instruct Ms Shaw to take Maria to the safe house. Then she can circle back and pick us and the bag up. Meet me by the elevators in the basement and we'll recover the money."

"Right you are, Finch. See you in forty-five minutes."

To be continued...


	15. Chapter 15

When Reese returned to Tyler's room Maria had finished stripping the bed. Rapidly he explained to her what they were going to do. She seemed stunned by the sudden turn of events. "I can't just leave town," she protested when he told her of Finch's offer of a change of identity.

"You may not have a choice," he replied. Sometimes brutal honesty was the best policy. "Just for now we want to get you out of here to a safe house. We can make better decisions once you're there and people aren't trying to kill you. As soon as Sameen is back she'll take you to a safe place. Don't worry, she can protect you," he added, seeing further protest forming in her face. She looked hard at him, and then nodded.

"Okay. Let me go hand over to my 2IC, and then I can go."

"Good decision," he told her. "We also need to remove the money before a gang war breaks out right in the hospital. I'm thinking you don't want it anymore?"

A look of relief passed over her face. "Oh, God no. Please, just take it and, I don't know, give it to charity or keep it or throw it in the river...anything. I wish I'd never laid eyes on it."

"Okay." He passed her a pen. "Write me down the number for storage, and it'll never bother you again."

She took the pen, pulled a notebook from her pocket and scribbled the number down. Tearing the sheet from the notebook, she passed it to him. "I'm never, ever doing this again."

"Glad to hear it." He smiled at her. "Don't worry, you're in good hands."

She grimaced in return, and went.

Xxxxx

He spent the last twenty minutes of his shift watching the elevators. Elias's soldier didn't reappear, and when Shaw hustled Maria out he relaxed a little. Once the clock hands had crept round to four pm he bade a cordial farewell to his erstwhile workmates, collected his street clothes from his locker and headed down the elevator to the basement. The doors opened to reveal Finch standing there with a battered brown gym bag. His face lit with one of his brief smiles when he saw Reese. "Ah, good, you're here."

Reese smiled back and gestured to Finch to wait in the corridor. He pushed casually through the double doors leading to the storage area, handed the number Maria had written for him across the counter to the clerk and waited with simulated boredom for the bag.

He didn't have to wait long. The bag made an impressive thump as it hit the counter. Reese signed for it with a carefully illegible scrawl, shouldered the bag and retreated.

Back out in the corridor he and Finch headed back to the elevators. Up to the street level. "Turn right when the doors open, John. There's a locker room about twenty meters along the corridor where we can make the switch and you can change out of your scrubs," Finch told him. Reese smiled to himself. Trust Harold to have all the moves mapped out. The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Elias's soldier was standing staring right at them. His eyes widened as he recognized the bag, but before he could react further Reese jabbed an elbow into his face and Finch hit the door close button. They exchanged a look as the elevator took them to temporary safety on another floor. Finch had his phone out, consulting the floor plan. "Back to the sixth floor, John," he said calmly. "We can use the locker room there, then move along a link corridor to another building and make our egress there instead."

Reese nodded. When the doors opened he poked his head out cautiously, then padded swiftly along the corridor to the locker room, Harold in his wake. Once inside he changed rapidly out of his scrubs and back into his suit while Harold frantically stuffed bundles of money into the brown bag. Once they were ready to move he took a careful look along the corridor. No-one in sight. He gestured for Harold to follow him, and they hurried along the corridor.

Xxxxx

Reese was glad of Harold's grasp of the hospital's layout by the time they made it into the neighboring building. Any hope he had that they could make a reasonably clean getaway was dashed as he saw the two gangbangers waiting by another set of elevators. Luckily they didn't seem to recognize the odd pair of men carrying a brown bag, but for safety's sake he and Finch walked casually past them and made for the stairwell instead.

Bad idea. They were two flights down when they heard the door above open; bypassing the elevator in favour of stairs had aroused the men's suspicions. They ducked through the next door back onto a corridor. He picked the lock on a vacant office and they took refuge there, sitting on the floor behind some absent doctor's desk. Reese shot a smile at Finch. "Just like old times, Harold."

"Yes, I'd forgotten how much you seem to enjoy this kind of situation, Mr Reese."

Finch's dry tones didn't deceive him. "Go on, Harold. Admit it, you're enjoying this too."

"I'll enjoy it a lot more once we're out of here, Mr Reese. Do you think they've gone?"

"Mm. Let's give it a couple more minutes. Then I think we should be safe enough."

Back out of the office, into the stairwell and down to the street level, listening all the time for the sounds of pursuit. They hurried along a last corridor as fast as Finch's dragging footsteps would allow. A door with a glass panel: locked, but they could see a fire exit just a dozen yards away. Quicker to just break the glass panel than to try to mess with the keypad.

"Quick, Harold, hold this." He passed the bag to Harold, who grabbed it as Reese rapidly stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his right forearm. A carefully aimed blow broke the glass and he reached through to turn the handle.

"Shit!" A long thin shard of glass poking out at an odd angle sliced easily through the jacket's folds. Pure bad luck dictated that he had left a thin patch in the hasty padding which of course the glass dagger had found unerringly. The door swung open and they bolted along the last short stretch to the fire exit. They half fell down the steps to the outside world and stumbled away in the late afternoon light. Reese probed his arm; the fabric around it was wet and his fingers came away bloody before he jammed them back over the sleeve, trying to apply pressure as best he could..

They dodged around the first corner they came to and made down an alley to a busy shopping street, slowing to a nonchalant stroll. He took up station just behind Finch, allowing his friend to obscure his cloth-wrapped arm from oncoming pedestrians. He concentrated on fighting the dizziness as they made it down the road away from the throng, a high wall to one side. Another twenty yards or so and they came to to an ornate stone gateway leading, apparently, into a cemetery. Reese was glad when they turned in and ducked behind the wall. He could feel the cold sweat and queasiness of shock setting in. He settled himself on the ground and gingerly unwrapped the jacket from his arm. His shirt sleeve was soaked and dripping; he found the hole in the fabric the glass had made and ripped it further to get access to a deep gash, only an inch long, just down from the fold of his elbow. The cut was spurting bright red blood which left splatters several feet away before he hastily pressed his palm over it.

He slumped lower against the wall. Blood leaked around his fingers and he breathed slowly and carefully to quell his rising nausea and slow his hammering heart.

"Mr Reese, John, here, I'll put a tourniquet around it..." Harold was stripping off his tie as he spoke.

"No, there's a better way," he said, fighting to get the words out clearly. "Feel the underside of my arm." He lifted it up, trying to ignore the rapid drip-drip-drip of bright blood leaking under his fingers and pattering to the ground as he did so. "Just down from the armpit. You're trying to find the artery. It'll feel like a piece of spaghetti, but pulsing. When you find it, press down as hard as you can."

Harold was breathing in gasps as his fingers probed, then clamped down hard on the pressure point. Reese cautiously loosened his grip on the gash. The fountain had slowed to an ooze. He sighed in satisfaction. Wiping his bloody hand on the grass, he dug for his phone and used his thumb to scroll down the list of contacts. "Shaw? We're out. You better come get us." He let the phone slide to the ground and closed his eyes.

"Do I need to loosen this off, John?" Harold inquired after a few minutes.

"No, that's why it's better than a tourniquet." He edged himself quietly further down towards the horizontal. Some unfunny joke about the virtues of getting laid, just not like this, hovered vaguely in his thoughts, but he couldn't quite bring it to mind and he suspected Harold wouldn't appreciate it anyway.

"It's just that my fingers are starting to cramp," said Harold apologetically after another few moments.

"Oh." Reese struggled to think. "I'll put pressure on the cut with my hand again, and you can switch around."

"Okay. Here goes, then."

"Got it?" gasped Reese as Harold groped for the pressure point.

"I can't find it again!" Harold sounded panicky.

"Don't worry, just keep looking," said Reese calmly. He wanted to explain to Harold that it was okay really, he was pretty comfortable all things considered. There was a strange sound in his ears, a hissing like static. The fingers continued to prod painfully at the underside of his arm as the hissing increased to a roar. But he felt wonderfully relaxed. Harold was here and he was safe.

"Got it!" he heard Harold say triumphantly, but it seemed to be coming from a long way off. He thought he heard Shaw's voice as his confused senses left him, but even if he was wrong it was okay because he was safe and he could just lie down and rest now.

Xxxxx

He woke up in a hospital bed, which was not so good, but it was in a safe house. Exposed brick walls, tasteful neutral coloured curtains at the windows, polished wooden floors. Clear pale sunlight was coming in – was it morning? Monitors beeping. There was a real doozy of a bandage on his right forearm, and he could feel a throbbing there, not painful exactly, but seemingly waiting to _become_ painful if he moved the wrong way. Or if the drugs wore off; he could tell he was well tanked on the good stuff. Harold was there by his bed, of course, putting his book aside as Reese stirred.

"Ah, you're awake," he said to Reese, sounding pleased, as though it was some great achievement.

"Uh-huh," Reese agreed. He noticed that he was hooked up to something more than just monitors: there was a bag of blood hanging on a stand next to him, being piped into his good arm. His mouth felt very dry, and there was a strange taste in it.

"You lost quite a lot of blood," said Finch, following his glance.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that," said Reese.

"Back with us, huh?" Shaw wandered in, glanced at the monitors and then methodically began switching them off and unplugging leads. She leaned over him and Reese flinched as she ripped the sensors off his chest. "These can come off now that you're awake. You'll only pull them off anyway. That stays in, though – y'hear?" she said, nodding towards the IV stand.

"Thanks for patching me up, Shaw," said Reese.

"Oh, that wasn't me," she replied, her eyes drifting to his bandaged arm. "This time, you were a Farouk Madani job. I assisted, though. You were lucky – you sliced right through your radial artery. It was a real nice neat cut you made and it was pretty easy for Farouk to repair it. No damage to tendons either, which was a surprise. If you're going to slit yourself open and nearly bleed out, that's the way to do it."

"Oh." He tried to think. "What day is it?"

"Sunday morning. Joss will be in again soon. She sat by you most of the night but I sent her home a few hours ago for some sleep," Harold told him. "I'm afraid Howard Eagles will be putting in some time tomorrow morning explaining why Detective Riley needs more time off. At least a life-threatening injury is a reasonably solid excuse. Even 1 Police Plaza can't argue with that."

Reese grunted agreement. Try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to worry about tomorrow. He was just too tired...

"Oh yeah. Maria. And Tyler, and the money. What happened...?" he finally remembered to ask.

"Maria has been set up with a new identity and a new home in Indiana," Finch told him. "Tyler was touch and go for a while but is expected to pull through. Medically speaking, anyway. We must contemplate how to keep him out of the Brotherhood's reach before the Machine gives us his number again. He's not exactly a model citizen, but leaving him out for Dominic to cut into small pieces for having the bad luck to develop appendicitis seems a bit barbaric. As for the money, it's been donated to the Salvation Army for their work with the homeless."  
>"That was quick, Finch," said Reese.<p>

"It needed to be. It was only a couple of hours later that Elias made contact asking its whereabouts. I was quite glad to be able to say with complete truth that it was no longer in my hands. He wasn't very pleased, but I think he realizes that his claim on it was notional at best. And I suggested to him that since Dominic doesn't have the money either the situation was not a complete loss. That sent him away a little happier."

"Oh. Good," he said vaguely. Then Joss was leaning over him smiling.

"Where did you come from?" he asked muzzily. He blinked a few times, pulling himself into better focus.

"You fell asleep again," she told him. "But your colour is much better now."

"Ah. You look pretty good yourself."

She took his good hand, lacing their fingers together, and planted herself in the chair by the bed. He lay there simply enjoying the sensation of being completely relaxed – nowhere to go and nothing to do.

"You had me worried there," she said at last.

"I had me worried, too." He smiled up at her and lifted their linked hands languidly, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

She smiled back. "I'm kind of looking forward to being well enough to come along on these excursions with you. Keep you out of trouble."

"That sounds nice. In a scary kind of way."

"Scary or not, you're stuck with me. Oh, and the answer is yes, by the way."

To be continued...


	16. Chapter 16

"The first step in the process is to harvest bone marrow stem cells, Joss," said Dr Epstein. "We do this under general anesthesia, using a large needle to draw bone marrow out of your pelvis."

Joss pulled a face. "Sounds, well, horrible, actually."

They were back in Epstein's office. It was more than a week after his latest brush with death, so John was with her, the dressing on his arm concealed beneath his suit jacket. She took a covert glance at his profile. He was listening hard; she could see the intense focus as he took in every detail of the doctor: not just his words, but his body language, his posture, the expression in his eyes as he went through the details of her treatment.

"You won't be awake for it, of course," said Dr Epstein with a smile. "You can expect some back pain afterwards, but the procedure is a fairly routine one, as such things go. Respiratory problems are a possible side effect of some of the medication we use. Obviously with your lung function already compromised we'll need to keep a sharp eye out. You can also expect to feel very tired for up to a month afterward, since your red count dips."

John looked a little concerned at Epstein's recitation of risks and side effects.

"Worth it if it works," she said sturdily, as much for his benefit as for the doctor's. John nodded fractionally.

"The next step is to culture the stem cells and coax them to form epithelial cells. These are the cells in lung tissue. Where the magic comes in is persuading those cells to actually _form_ lung tissue. The new epithelial cells are treated with a DNA solution which programs them to form the right type of tissue. We inject the treated cells into diseased areas of your lungs, and they gradually colonize and replace the diseased tissue. You'll need to spend about thirty-six hours in hospital after each injection, and have daily scans. I'm afraid paid employment will not be an option for several months."

Joss shrugged at this. "It's not like I have much choice at this point, really, is it?" she said. "If I reached the stage where I needed a transplant it would be much the same."

"That's true," agreed Epstein.

"So when can we get started?" she asked.

"Since your insurer has been so cooperative in all of this, I see no reason why we can't get started as soon as possible. Once you've cleared things with your employers, we can set a date for the first round of treatment. Any time from next week."

Joss felt her face split in a huge smile. "I can't thank you enough, Doctor. You have no idea what this means to me."

Epstein smiled in return, but his eyes were serious. "Don't get too invested in this treatment, Joss. You've seen the figures from the animal trials. Eighty-five percent of the treated animals showed improvement in their condition. But that still leaves fifteen percent which did not. You have a very, very good chance of a near-full recovery. But I don't want you to crash and burn if it fails. Leave me to carry that emotional burden, will you?"

Joss tried to tamp down her smile. "Okay, Doc. Whatever you say."

But she was still walking on air as they left his office.

Xxxxxx

Finch was sitting staring in dismay at the photo on his laptop screen. "Oh, my. Oh, my." He had known for some time that this day might be coming, but now it had arrived and he was still no closer to making a decision about what course of action he and his friends should take. Reluctantly he printed the picture out and taped it to the window. Then he sat staring at it for a full five minutes before he got his phone out and began placing calls. Each time his phone connected, he simply said, "Could you please meet me at the station? We have another number." When he had completed his task, he sat back down staring up at the picture. "Oh, my."

xxxx

Joss, John and Shaw all arrived in the subway car at the same time. They exchanged nods before Finch cleared his throat. "We have some important decisions to make," he said. He gestured towards the window with the picture on it. "There's our new number."

"Oh, crap," said Shaw. "Dominic."

"Indeed." Finch sat down behind the computer desk. "There are a number of practical and moral problems with this particular number, of course."

"Yeah, like persuading him to let us help him at all," said Shaw. "Neither John nor I were on his Christmas card list last I heard."

"Indeed. Although that assumes he's a victim and not a threat," pointed out Finch.

"The fact that his number has come up would suggest that the war between Elias and the Brotherhood is about to heat up," said Joss thoughtfully.

"Yeah, I bet Elias is involved somehow, whether Dominic is the victim or the perp," agreed Reese.

"And therein lies another problem," said Finch. "Elias is a known quantity and has been useful to us in the past. If he were to be planning to eliminate Dominic, in many ways it would be in our interests to allow Elias to have his way. Yet we've always held ourselves aloof from the various gang and mob rivalries."

There was a heavy silence as the four of them considered this.

"I say we take the creep down," said Shaw. "If he's the perp, no problem. If he was going to be the vic, well, he's likely to go easier with John or me involved than with Elias. Everyone may die in the end, but after Scarface Elias will make Dominic's death truly memorable."

Quietly John said "I'm okay with taking him out if he's the threat. But I'd rather gift wrap him for Fusco if there's a choice. And you're on your own if he's the vic, Shaw. I don't execute people any more."

Joss released a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. "Is there any point in approaching Elias about this?" she asked reluctantly.

Finch grimaced. "I was really hoping to avoid Elias for a while to give him time to forget about the money we, er, rescued," he said. "I'm not at all sure any meeting with him would be very productive right now, Joss."

She nodded relieved agreement.

"Trouble is, we just don't have enough information right now. It makes a big difference whether Dominic's the victim or the threat," pointed out John.

"We could just grab him and keep him somewhere safe until we work it out," said Shaw.

"Dear God, I hope it doesn't come to that," muttered Finch.

"Fusco and I can see what the NYPD knows about Dominic's current schemes," said John. "There might be a CI out there who knows something. But if we can't turn up anything useful, Shaw may have a point. It might be easier to grab him than leave him loose to be either murdered or commit murder. At least we'd be in control of the situation then."

"Only until both Elias and the Brotherhood turned up on our doorstep trying to get him back. That sounds like a great way for us to end up _really dead_ this time," said Finch heatedly.

Both John and Sameen tried to speak at once, and Joss was very tempted to clap her hands like an elementary school teacher to try to restore order. Instead she waited until they had run out of steam.

"It sounds like we need somewhere to stash Dominic which will leave him unable to either perpetrate a crime, or become the victim of one. And which keeps us clear of the fallout," she said.

"That would be an accurate summary, Ms Carter," said Finch.

"Prison won't foot it, he'd be vulnerable to Elias in there and at the same time quite capable of directing whatever plan he might have," she went on, thinking aloud.

"How about Federal custody? They could put him in a cell right next to Quinn," said Shaw.

"A charming thought, Ms Shaw. Hard to arrange at short notice, though," said Finch.

"A mental hospital?" Joss sounded tentative, even to her own ears.

Finch looked interested. "How could we go about that? Make him appear disturbed enough to fool those around him into surrendering him for treatment..." He lapsed into thought.

"Is there some way we could drug him? Some sort of hallucinogen?" Shaw pondered.

"I'm not sure I like that idea, Ms Shaw," said Finch. "Whether he's the victim or the threat, an uncontrolled dose of a powerful psychoactive drug is too dangerous."

"Wish there was some way of messing with his head," said John meditatively. "Make him think he was going nuts."

"Nah, Dominic's never going to fall for that," said Shaw. "And how would we ever get close enough to him to manipulate him? We can't even find him half the time."

"Remember last year when those mental patients had their court orders rescinded?" said Joss suddenly. "What if we pulled the same trick in reverse? It'd keep Dominic out of circulation for a couple of days until his lawyers fought through the red tape to get him sprung. Enough time for us to figure out what was happening."

"Can you do that, Finch?" John sounded interested.

Finch pursed his lips. "I shall see what can be achieved, Mr Reese," he said abstractedly, applying himself to his keyboard.

Xxxx

Between catching up at work, Joss's clinic appointment and the new Number, Reese hadn't had time for an extremely important shopping trip. He grimaced to himself. It was all part and parcel of his half-assed marriage proposal that he hadn't even considered the matter of the ring. So it was the next day, after his shift finished, that he finally made it into a jeweller's shop. He'd been in to this one not long before Christmas, in search of earrings for Joss. But a ring... the glass cases were stuffed with them, row on row and rank on rank. He stood for a moment slightly dazzled by this glittering array of female adornment. Luckily the counter staff were all busy with other customers, so he slid over to the nearest counter and started looking. It didn't take long to eliminate some choices. Yellow gold, not white: white wouldn't look right against the caramel of her skin. He also rejected the rings which were solely set with diamonds. Colour, Joss would look great with a coloured stone, as well as diamonds. Sapphires? No; blue was wrong somehow. Maybe rubies... then he saw the emeralds and instantly he had a vision of her with diamonds and emeralds sparkling against her skin. A great, big string of them looped all the way around her naked body like a rope he could use to... he shook his head. Leaving aside any other considerations, Riley's pay would never stretch to that. Though of course he could now access some of Reese's old funds, locked away in an offshore account...Rings, John. Focus.

By the time a sales assistant, a young woman with a Russian accent, approached him he had it down to two possible choices. There was a square-cut emerald surrounded by diamond chips, which he liked because it seemed somehow to suit Carter – tough, no nonsense. He could imagine the tiny flashes of green and white fire from her hand as she gestured to make a point. It was the sort of ring that could sit on the finger of a hand holding a gun. Which he decided was a very weird thought.

The other ring was quite different. Instead of a plain band, it was a delicate spray of leaves, each picked out with tiny emeralds. In the spaces between the leaves small diamonds nestled like flowers. It was beautiful and feminine. That was Joss. The sales assistant got them out of the case for him and he looked at them. Which could he imagine on her better? "Would you like to see them on?" asked the assistant, smiling. She slipped one on to each hand and held them before him. He hesitated a long moment. Really the square cut was more like the persona she projected to the world. Joss Carter, badass. He gestured towards it. "I'll take that one, please." She nodded, and began to put the leaf ring away.

"No. Stop." He looked again at the two rings. The woman waited, radiating patience. "I guess you get this a lot," he said to her.

She gave him an amused glance. "I tell you what. If you take both of them, I give you a special price."

He lifted his eyebrows.

"How about twenty-five percent off both? That comes to twelve hundred."

Ouch. A lot more than he'd been planning to spend. She saw the expression on his face. "Okay, eleven hundred. But it's more than my job's worth to go any lower." She began to put both rings away to emphasise her point.

He sighed to himself. For someone who survived by making split-second decisions he wasn't doing very well here. Eleven hundred dollars for the woman of his dreams? And there was always the offshore account. "Okay, I'll take both." The woman flashed him a triumphant smile and whisked the rings away to the cash register before he could change his mind again.

Xxxxx

On the subway home to Brooklyn he realised that he had really only delayed his decision. He still had to decide which ring to present to Carter as her engagement ring. Badass ring, or beautiful ring? Trouble was, she was both. Badass/beautiful, beautiful/badass ... he swiped a hand through his hair. Maybe he should let her choose. Though that destroyed the element of surprise.

"Huh," he suddenly said. Yeah, there was always another option...

When he got home Joss was in the kitchen area and he could smell lasagna cooking. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and dodged through to the bedroom. Rapidly he unpacked both rings and checked for price tags, then shoved one in each pocket. Returning to the kitchen, he took Joss by the hand and led her over to the sofa. "Sit down, Joss," he told her. She looked mystified, but obeyed.

He got down on one knee. Her eyes lit in understanding.

"Joss Carter, you are the strongest, most courageous woman I have ever met. I sleep better at night knowing you have my back. And that you're not coming after me anymore," he added with a smirk. Joss giggled. He slipped the box from his pocket and opened it to reveal the square-cut emerald. "Will you be my wife?"

Joss smiled and blinked tears from her eyes. "Yes, of course I will," she whispered as he slid the ring on her finger. She made to hug him.

"Wait, I'm not finished yet," he said, and she sat back again, her eyebrows rising.

"Joss Carter, you are the most beautiful woman, inside and out, that I have ever met. You touch me inside in places no one's ever reached before. You're still changing me into a better man. Will you marry me?" He pulled out the second box and opened it. The tiny diamonds and emeralds sparkled. He heard an intake of breath, but that was all. He raised his eyes to her face, saw the tears on her cheek, and moved to kiss them away. Her arms tightened around him, and her voice was muffled as she spoke into his shoulder. "Yes, John. Yes."

To be continued...

**A/N For the next while I'm afraid updates may come erratically. My mum is now in the final stages of her cancer so obviously my priorities will simply be in other places. On the other hand, writing is a release for me, so I my even find myself writing more. I just don't know. I fully intend to finish this story, so hang in there everyone and please understand if the next few chapters come a bit more slowly.**


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: Thank you all so much for all the messages of support I've had in the last week. You are all awesome! Please keep the reviews coming, I'm a sad, sad person and I get a real kick out of each and every one of them!**

"You got the wrong guy! Listen to me you fuckers, you got the wrong guy!"

Detective Riley stood across the road from the convenience store he'd tracked Dominic to and watched with interest as four uniforms manhandled the gang leader through the doors and into the waiting patrol car. The air turned blue with Dominic's oaths, and Riley's brows rose in appreciation. He thought he'd heard – or used – pretty much every cuss word known to man, but it seemed there was always something new to learn. Chuckling, he walked back to his cruiser. He pulled out into traffic and began the trip back to the precinct,calling Finch as he did so. "Mission accomplished, Harold. Dominic's pissed as hell, but he'll be safe for the next day or so."

"Glad to hear that, John," replied Harold. "I'll let you know once I have any more news."

After that the morning passed almost pleasantly. For once Riley found his paperwork soothing rather than irksome. He strolled out to lunch with Fusco and allowed himself to be persuaded to sample some falafel, then resumed paperwork. By late afternoon it had lost its appeal, and he was glad when Fusco fielded a call which took them both out to Crown Heights.

"You heard that old joke, John? The one that asks whether if a drug dealer falls in Crown Heights, but no-one calls it in, was a crime committed?" Fusco drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they waited at a red light.

"Can't say I had, Lionel," Riley murmured from the passenger seat.

"Ah, you're just not philosophical enough, Riley." Fusco smiled across at him.

Just at that moment Finch's voice came through on his earpiece. "John, things have just gotten a bit more complicated. I received another number about an hour ago, and this time it's Link."

"Well, I suppose in itself that tells us something. Elias must be involved," said Riley.

"Yes, but it still doesn't really clarify who's victim and who's threat. Is Dominic going to use Link to commit a murder? Or is Elias threatening Link to draw out Dominic? In any case, I had Ms Shaw following Link, but she's lost him. He got on the subway and dodged her in the crowd. We think he's heading for Crown Heights – he got a call on his cell just before he ditched her asking him to meet someone there. I'll send you the address."

"Not like Shaw to lose her target," commented Riley.

"No, and I think that's a subject best avoided with her right now. She's very annoyed."

As his cell vibrated in his pocket the red light changed to green, and Fusco accelerated away from it. "Huh. Finch, that's the address Fusco and I are headed for. A body was discovered there about forty minutes ago."

"Oh." Finch was silent for a moment, and Riley could imagine his fingers flashing across the keyboard. "Police comms aren't telling me anything helpful, Detective. You already know everything the first responders have found. Just be careful."

Riley snorted slightly. "Always, Harold." He tapped his earpiece to finish the call.

"Care to fill me in on what Glasses was telling you?" asked Fusco.

"He didn't tell me anything useful," said Riley. "Looks like we're out in front of him this time."

"Great," said Fusco. "Just great."

xxxxxx

When they reached the building Riley let Fusco take the lead and watched as he ducked under the crime scene tape and spoke to the unis. He himself hung back, looking around, scanning the area for anything unusual. Hoping to see Link, or anyone else he recognised from the Brotherhood. No luck, though – just the usual knot of interested onlookers. He began to hand out cards and went through the charade of asking if anyone knew anything, although he could tell in advance that it was useless. Then suddenly he saw a flicker of movement: someone disappearing around a corner into an alley. Some subliminal impression pulled him to full alert, and he shouldered through the thinning crowd in pursuit. He reached the mouth of the alley, which had the usual complement of trash cans and a couple of dumpsters, in time to see a black guy in a ski jacket walking rapidly away – was it Link? The guy's walk seemed familiar. He could see traffic and people crossing the alley's mouth at the far end. He increased his speed to a fast trot. The figure seemed unaware of him.. But before either he or his quarry got to the street, two large men rounded the corner ahead and began to move purposefully towards them. As soon as Reese's target saw them he turned, and Reese could see it was Link. The two big guys were going for weapons, and so was Link. Reese felt for his own, but a sudden stunning impact at the back of his head dropped him in his tracks. He just had time reflect that Shaw wasn't the only one off her game today when a second blow plunged him abruptly into darkness.

Xxxxx

Reese woke up to the familiar sensation of zip ties on his wrists and a tremendous headache. He was sitting in a straight backed chair in a large vacant space – an underground car park? A cellar? It was large, empty and had a lot of concrete, that much he could tell. The air seemed dry and there was a smell of dust, but nothing worse. A couple of ordinary fluorescent tubes provided light in the immediate area. He could see two, no, three large men standing patiently in the shadows just beyond the reach of the lights. Several feet away Link sat slumped in another chair, also restrained with zip ties. He seemed semiconscious, stirring a little and grunting slightly as he clawed his way back to full wakefulness. Opposite the two chairs was a rather more comfortable sofa. Elias sat on it reading a book, a glass of wine sitting on a small table at his elbow.

Noticing Reese's movements, Elias put his book aside and glanced over at him.

"Why, hello, John. I apologise for the manner in which you were brought here. It's a pity. If only you had been thirty seconds slower coming around the corner my boys would have completed the snatch and you wouldn't have become involved."

Reese raised his eyebrows. "So what are you going to do with me, Elias?"

"Oh, you're quite safe," said Elias, smiling. "I can't have you interfering in what I'm about to do here, but I have no great objection to your presence. Once I'm finished I'll release you into the wild again. You may even find it educational."

Reese kept his face carefully expressionless. Link's movements became more purposeful, and his eyes fluttered open. He looked around himself groggily, seemed to realise he was tied up, and began to throw himself against his restraints.

Elias gazed dispassionately at his captive. After a few minutes of fruitless struggle, Link became still. He sat, panting a little from his exertions, and looked up numbly at Elias.

"What do you want with me?" he asked. Elias stood up and walked slowly over to him.

"This is where we find out just how much value your boss places on you, Mr Cordell," said the mob boss softly. "Is he prepared to come and meet me to negotiate over your fate? Or will he decide you're useless to him and abandon you?" He grinned across at Reese. "You look very uncomfortable, John. If you give me your word you won't try anything, I can let you get up."

"You'd trust my word?" asked Reese, giving himself time to think.

"Absolutely. I know you well enough by now, John, to know you're a man of honour. Give me your parole, like in the good old days, and we can break bread together tonight, you can be my guest in much more comfortable accommodations than this, and I'll return you to freedom tomorrow."

"What about him?" asked Reese, jerking his head in Link's direction.

"I promise you, not a hair on his head will be harmed. Not by me, anyway," said Elias. His face was serious. Reese examined him carefully, but he could find no hint of deception. After a long pause, he nodded slowly. "All right, Elias. I'll take you at your word."

Elias nodded to one of the goons, and the man stepped forward with a knife and cut away the zip ties. Reese lurched stiffly to his feet, massaging his wrists. Elias gestured expansively. "This way, John..."

"Hey. What about me?" came Link's voice behind them.

Elias turned. "I said I wouldn't harm you, Mr Cordell. I never said I'd untie you just yet." Another smile, and he conducted Reese ceremoniously out of the big room.

Xxxxx

Finch fumbled and nearly dropped the phone in his hurry to answer the call. "Mr Reese, where have you been?"

"I'm sorry, Harold, it's not John. But don't worry, he's quite safe."

"Elias?" Harold's heart beat just a little faster.

"Yes, it's me. I have John, but he's quite well. He won't be rejoining you tonight, but I plan to release him tomorrow, once a certain piece of business I'm conducting has been completed."

"Elias-"

"Now listen to me, Harold." Elias' voice over the phone became hard. "You may recall I asked you a few weeks ago to stay out of my way. I'm prepared to forgive you over the money, but do _not_ make the mistake of assuming my forbearance will last indefinitely. I have no intention of allowing you to interfere with my current project, and I'm making John's safety conditional on you sitting on your hands for the next twelve hours."

Finch's mouth was a tight line. "If he comes to any harm, Elias...just please be aware that John is not my only asset. If he is not returned unharmed our _understanding_ will be at an end, and I will find ways to hurt you."

There was a chuckle from the other end of the line. "Harold, Harold. There's no need for such aggression from you. I'm a man of my word, and John will be completely safe, provided he doesn't try anything. He's given me his word he won't, so we're actually about to sit down to a rather delicious stinco di maiale I've had cooking slowly for the last few hours."

Harold glared at the phone in his hand.

"I'll take your silence as assent, then, Harold," said Elias. "Remember, no interference." The call ended.

Harold sat down in front of his computer. "Oh, John. What have you gotten yourself into?"

xxxxx

Joss sat on the bed massaging her temples. What a day. The ruckus Dominic's lawyers had kicked up – he could afford the best – had even reached her own corner of the DA's office. They were threatening to turn his court-ordered detention on mental health grounds into a major scandal and in truth the State was backpedalling as fast as it could. She wouldn't be recommending that tactic to Finch again; Dominic hadn't spent more than twelve hours in custody.

Then the call from Finch. Elias had both Link and John. Despite the reassurances for John's safety, she had to admit to herself that she was worried. She pulled out her phone and checked for messages. Nothing, of course. She weighed it in her hand, then sighed slightly and picked out a number. A few rings and it connected.

"Mom? It's Joss here."

"Jossie! I'm so pleased to hear from you." Her mother's tones were warm, and Joss relaxed onto the pillows.

"I just thought I'd give you a call. Anything new?"

"Not much going on here, lovie. We're through the Tudors and into the Stuarts in my history course. And Pastor Bill's gone on a short-term mission to Nepal, so guess who's ended up on the preaching roster at church for next week. You?"

Joss smiled a little grimly to herself. "Well, Mom, there's a couple of things I need to tell you about." She outlined the treatment she was being offered.

"Well, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity. An answer to prayer, dare I say," said Mom. Joss rolled her eyes.

"Mm," she replied. "But I'm going to have to take leave of absence from work for several months. It sounds like it's not going to be a picnic while the treatment's in progress, though if it works the payoff will be worth it."

"Oh, I agree," said Mom. "Jossie, if there's anything I can do to help, you know you only need to call."

"Thanks, Mom." She took a deep breath for the next part. "There's another thing."

"Oh?"

"Well, John's asked me to marry him."

There was a silence from the other end of the phone. "I hope you said yes," said her mother.

Joss smiled at the phone. "Of course I did." She briefly considered telling her mother about John's marriage proposals – all three of them – but instead found herself hugging the memory to herself. No, that could remain private.

"Well, I'm glad. No, that's not strong enough. Jossie, I'm delighted for you both. He's a good man, I didn't need long with him to tell that. God bless the both of you."

They chatted for a little longer, and then she finished the call. Whew. That had been a lot easier then she'd imagined. Now there was only Taylor and Paul, but she would leave that for tomorrow. She rose and went through to the bathroom to shower.

Xxxxx

The stinco di maiale was pork, meltingly tender and delicious as promised, paired with a truly chewy red wine and followed with tiramisu. "It's a cliche, I know," said Elias, "but I have a real thing for tiramisu, you know?" He leaned back and sighed, replete. Reese was similarly placed.

"Who was it who said that the trouble with Italian food was that two or three days later you're hungry again?" he said, belching slightly.

Elias snorted a little at that. "I'd never heard that one before." He had been keeping the conversation deliberately light, Reese had noticed. Food, wine, baseball. Absolutely no business. Under the circumstances he had little choice but to follow along. And there was a certain surreal appeal in seeing Elias playing the gracious host. The setting was certainly surreal in its own right – a table set with a white cloth and crystal, placed on a concrete floor in a basement somewhere. Elias had refused to reveal the location - "Really, John. You and Harold have your secret base, don't you think I'm entitled to my own?" - but Reese surmised that it was under a warehouse somewhere, maybe in Elias' old stomping ground of Brighton Beach.

They rose from the table and Elias guided Reese down a corridor. As they approached a closed door Elias remarked, "I wonder if Dominic's legal team have had enough time to spring him yet?"

Reese's eyebrows rose. Elias beamed back at him. "It was a clever move, having him taken into custody. I had to change to Plan B quite quickly, but I think it's been a blessing in disguise. This way will be much better." Seeing the look on Reese's face, Elias laughed outright. "Don't worry, John. Using your opponent's strength against him is the surest way of winning a fight, don't you think? That's what I'm going to do with the Brotherhood. But that will need to wait for the morning, once Dominic's free and wondering where his right-hand man has got to."

He opened the door to reveal a spartan but quite adequate bedroom: a bed, a night stand, a reading light. "There's a toilet through the other door, there. No windows, though, and I'm afraid the door will be locked and guarded overnight."

"I thought you trusted my word, Elias," murmured Reese.

"Indeed I do, John. But I wouldn't want to put you in the way of temptation either." Elias smiled briefly, waited for Reese to enter the room, and turned to leave. "Sleep well."


	18. Chapter 18

Reese sat on his bed, waiting. He hadn't minded sleeping in his underwear, but donning yesterday's shirt had left him feeling itchy and slightly sticky. No toothbrush, either. He'd have to mention that to the hotel management, he thought, and smiled to himself.

At last there was the rattle of the door lock. No Elias this time, just a large, silent goon who nodded politely and gestured for Reese to come out. He did so, returning the man's nod just as silently and wondering to himself whether the guy was in fact capable of speech. They walked along the corridor, turned a corner and went through a door into the large basement he'd been in the previous day. Link was there, tied to his chair; Reese hoped he hadn't been left there all night. Elias was back on his sofa, reading again. All in all, the scene was the same as yesterday. His trailing goon halted just outside the reach of the light as Elias turned and beckoned Reese closer.

"Do sit down, John," he said with a smile. Reese contemplated the choices: the sofa next to Elias, or the straight-backed chair he'd occupied yesterday? He went for the straight-backed chair. Elias gave him a tiny nod and then turned his attention to Link.

"So," he said. "This is where my experiment begins. I have your phone here, Mr Cordell, and I am wondering what your boss's reaction will be when you make contact with him after eighteen hours of silence. Will he be worried? Pleased and relieved to hear from you? Angry? Let's find out, shall we?" He put the phone on speaker and placed a call.

"Yo. Link," came Dominic's voice after a moment.

"Not Mr Cordell, I'm afraid, my friend," said Elias smoothly. "It's me, the old lion."

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

"I have Mr Cordell with me, though," said Elias with fake helpfulness. "Would you like to speak with him?" He held the phone out towards Link, who glared at him.

"Link. What the hell's going on?" came Dominic's voice.

"He got ahold of me, Dominic," said Link reluctantly. "His guys jumped me and I woke up here."

"So what am I supposed to do about that?" came the voice from the phone.

Elias spoke again. "It's really quite simple, Dominic. You come and talk to me, and we see if we can negotiate our way out of this situation."

"The only 'situation' here is that you took one of my men. If there's a 'situation' it's of your making." Dominic sounded irritated.

"I was thinking it was actually pretty artistic. You took Anthony, I've got Link. A balance, don't you think? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life."

More silence from the phone. Then "No deal. You're cooking something up, but I ain't biting."

Elias shrugged. "Your funeral. Though of course, it's not _your_ funeral at all, is it?" He passed a thumb over the phone's screen, ending the call. Link stared, wide-eyed, from his seat. Elias smiled broadly at him.

"You promised you wouldn't harm him, Elias," said Reese warningly.

"But I'm not going to," said Elias. The smile faded. "I doubt I will need to."

"So what happens now?" asked Reese.

"Well, I'm prepared to wait a short time for Dominic to reconsider and call back. But after that, you will just need to wait and see," said Elias seriously.

"You won't get anything out of me," said Link defiantly.

"I'm sure you realise, Mr Cordell, that I'm not at all interested in 'getting anything out of you'," said Elias. "In fact, you should take pride in the fact that your value is entirely intrinsic."

Link looked confused.

Elias seemed to take pity. "What I mean is, you're valuable to me because you're _you_, Mr Cordell," he said gently. Link still looked mystified.

"Never mind, Mr Cordell," said Elias briskly, rising from the sofa. "It'll all become clear in a couple of hours." He pocketed the phone, nodded to Reese, and strode off into the shadows.

xxxxx

Still sitting on his straight-backed chair, Reese looked anxiously at his watch. Elias hadn't offered breakfast, which was almost a relief after gorging last night. It was after half-past eight in the morning now, and he was supposed to be at the precinct at nine. He snorted to himself at this – since when had he ever been a clock-watcher? He hadn't been too worried about missing the last hour or so of work yesterday afternoon, but if he was late in this morning there would be problems. Maybe keeping the Riley identity was going to prove more trouble than it was worth.

He glanced up. Elias was approaching with the silent goon in tow. The guy was carrying a black hood, and Reese's muscles tensed. Elias held his hands out in a placating gesture. "I realize you won't like this, John, but I have to ask you to wear this hood as we leave. Much as I've enjoyed your company, I really don't want to disclose this place's location to you and Harold."

Reese's lips pressed together in a tight line.

"I'm afraid you don't really have a choice in this," added Elias. He gestured towards more figures off in the darkness. "I have enough help here that even you won't be able to fight your way out. I would prefer to avoid damage to my people, and of course to you yourself, but if necessary I can simply have you drugged."

Reese shot Elias a glare, and then slowly nodded. After all, if Elias had meant him harm, he'd had plenty of opportunity already.

"Give it to him," said Elias to the ox-like man beside him, and Reese accepted the hood from him and placed it over his own head.

"Well, Mr Cordell, it would seem that Dominic is not willing to lift a finger to help you. And so, regretfully, I am forced to dispense with your company," Reese heard Elias saying to Link. There were the muffled sounds of a struggle as Link had a hood placed over his own head, far less gently. Then Reese allowed himself to be guided along, presumably, more corridors until he was placed in the back of a car, a large town car from the feel of it. A another large man got in next to him, and then, apparently, Link on the far side. A pause as two more people got in the front, and then the car backed out of its space, turned and ran up a ramp into daylight.

Some stops and starts, city driving in the remnants of rush hour. After a while the car came to a stop and Elias said, "The hoods can come off now." The hulking man with whom he was sharing body heat turned slightly, but Reese beat him to it and removed his own hood. Link was glaring and blinking as his hood came off. They were sitting in the park by the Queensboro bridge. The skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan gleamed in fitful sunshine across the river. Elias opened his car door and got out, nodding to his driver as he did so. The man got out and opened the door on Reese's side. Reese exited, stretching his cramped shoulders as he did. On the other side of the car Link and his guard emerged.

Elias was standing staring out over the river. Then he turned to look at Link, eyes serious.

"Mr Cordell, I have decided to let you go. You are free to return to Dominic." The guard cut Link's zip ties.

Link glared at Elias. "What the hell are you doing? Dominic's gonna come after you hard after this."

"Do you really think so, Link – may I call you Link?" Elias assumed his schoolmaster persona. "I have thought long and hard about this. In order for humans to live together there needs to be an element of trust. Take John, here. His lady friend can't be with him every moment of every day, so she has to take it on trust that John isn't playing her false with another woman. Not that John ever would, he's far too loyal to ever think of such a thing. And she knows that, so their relationship works. She trusts him. Anthony and I trusted each other completely. Now that was real brotherhood. So I ask myself, how much does Dominic trust your loyalty? If I let you go back to him, will he take you back? Or will he always have that little niggle in the back of his mind, wondering if I flipped you while you were with me? And you. Do you trust him to look after you? Is there enough _brotherhood_ between you that you'll go back to his side after he abandoned you to the tender mercies of his worst enemy?" Elias smiled gently. "I do so look forward to observing your next moves, Link."

Link stood massaging his wrists and glaring at Elias. The rumble of traffic came from the bridge above.

"Off you go, Mr Cordell," said Elias with a magnanimous wave of his hand. "You're free now."

Link turned without a word and walked up towards the main road. Elias turned to Reese. "This is where we part ways as well, John," he said. "Here's your phone back. I do look forward to our next meeting, don't you? They're always exciting occasions."

Reese took the proffered phone. "What do you expect to happen now, Elias?" he asked.

"I genuinely don't know," Elias answered seriously. "With any luck Link will return to Dominic and decide to kill him before Dominic can kill Link. Or perhaps Dominic will get in first. Or maybe Link will try to get out of town, in which case Dominic's lost his lieutenant as surely as I lost Anthony. In an organization like the Brotherhood there should be some internecine warfare while Link's replacement emerges. There's also the chance Link will try some kind of stunt to undercut his former master, set up on his own perhaps. I expect the ants' nest to be seething for some weeks, and I have my own plans for that period." He gave Reese a hard stare. "Please be sure to inform my former chess partner of all this, and try to stay out of my way. You really, really don't want to jog my elbow right now."

He turned away and got into his car. His goon closed the door for him, then he and the guard got in the front and the car pulled smoothly away. Reese watched it go, and then pulled out his phone to call Harold.

Xxxxx

Joss was checking her emails when John's call came. She was wearing her badass ring today, because she was in a badass mood. The call to Taylor and Paul that morning to tell them of her engagement and new treatment had drawn a mixed reaction. Pretty predictable, really: Taylor had been ecstatic to hear of the treatment, guardedly positive about the engagement. Paul was pleased about the treatment, very neutral about her engagement, not that it was really his business. At least they were all past the time when anything she did in their eyes was wrong, but she still missed the easy camaraderie which had once existed between herself and her son. But there was no point crying over spilt milk, so she'd gotten out of her lonely, Johnless bed, squared her shoulders, and marched off to work. Her dour expression changed in an instant to a wide smile when she answered his call. "John! I'm so glad to hear your voice!"

"Hey, Carter," he came back. She could hear the smirk in his voice.

"You okay? Finch told me Elias had you."

"Yeah, he grabbed me off the street, put me up for the night and then let me go a little while ago."

"There's more to it than that, but I guess you can tell me about it tonight. You _are_ coming home tonight, right?"

"Well, yes, there is more to it. I got a good bump on the head, and there's a thing he does with a pork shank that is unbelievable-"

"My mind is boggling," she told him, smiling to herself. There was a pause of several seconds.

"I'm going to ignore that," he said primly. He told her about Link and Dominic, and she became serious. "So anyway, Joss, I need to find Link as soon as I can and get him out of harm's way. I hope I can get home tonight, but..."

"Okay," she sighed. "Call me when you know more."

"Will do, Ma'am," he said softly, and ended the call.

In the silence of her office, Joss sat and contemplated the shelf of North Eastern Reporters opposite her. Then she sighed again, picked up her pen, and got to work. Another week or two, and I'm outta here, she thought to herself.

Xxxxx

Reese picked up Link as he emerged from the subway on Schenectady Avenue. "Link!" He called. "Hey, Link!" Link turned, his hand jerking towards his jacket pocket. He saw Reese and shook his head in annoyance, but allowed him to approach.

"Shit, man, can't you keep your voice down?" he hissed. "I'm trying to to lay low here."

Reese's eyebrows rose. "Then what are you doing out in broad daylight? Laying low usually involves, well, laying low."

Link looked downwards and shrugged his thin shoulders. "'M trying to get over to Crown Heights, to a place I'll be safe."

"Do you think that'll work?"

"Maybe. At least it'll give me time to think."

"What if I told you I had a place you could stay where you'll be _really_ safe?" asked Reese.

Link bit his lip, gazing out across the street. "I'd say-" but his words were drowned out by the gunning of a powerful engine and then a rapid patter of gunfire. Screams erupted around them as passers-by dived for the subway entrance or whatever cover was within reach. Reese pulled Link down the stairs. "Well, that was Dominic getting his retaliation in first," he said grimly. "You need to come with me now if you want to see sunset."

Link giggled: an unnerving sound. "Oh, he's not getting it in first," he said, stifling more giggles. "Reckon he just found the pipe bomb one of my guys left under his car." He caught Reese's expression and sobered abruptly. "Hey, no need to wet yourself, man, it was only a little one."

"You're coming with me, Link," Reese ground out, and tightened his grip on Link's upper arm, tapping his earpiece with his other hand. "Finch? I'm bringing Link to the safe house. We need to get him out of town _yesterday_."

xxxxxx

"Have you ever heard of a holm-ganging?" said Finch as he sat down on the sofa and opened his laptop, placing it on the coffee table.

"A what?" Link gave him a suspicious look.

"When two Norsemen had a dispute, one way of settling it was for them both to take themselves off to an island, a 'holm', from which only one would return alive. 'Holm-ganging' – island-going. The temptation to simply place you and Dominic on an island together and let you slug it out is considerable. At least no innocents would get caught in the crossfire." Finch stared at Link in weary exasperation. "However, we live in a more civilized age these days, and in any case there's enough of a physical disparity between the two of you to render it a little unfair."

Link shrugged at this. "Not like either of us has a choice. If I don't get Dominic, he'll get me. He knows it, so he's gonna be coming after me hard."

"Elias has got you both dancing to his tune," said Reese reflectively. "No matter how it pans out between you two, he wins."

"If you could walk away from this, Link, would you?" asked Finch suddenly.

Link shrugged again. "What else could I do? This city, these people – it's all I know."

"What if you could go anywhere else, do whatever you liked? What would you choose?"

Link gazed back at Finch warily. Then he dropped his gaze to the hands in his lap. "When I was a little kid, I used to watch nature documentaries all the time. Lions, tigers, cheetahs. I loved them animals. Used to wish I could go to Africa and see 'em for real." His fingers were twisting around each other. "Just stupid dreams little kids have, huh?"

"Not so stupid, Link," said Harold gently. He turned his attention to his keyboard. "So if I was to give you a new identity and find you a job with, say, a conservation organization working in..." his voice slowed as he typed and clicked furiously. "...in Botswana, would you take it?"

Link's face became completely blank. "What? How...?"

"He's good with computers," said Reese.

Finch paused in his work and turned to face Link again. "It seems to me that Dominic and Elias both see you as a piece in a game they're playing. But that's not what you are. I don't like the things you've done in the past, Link, but right now you're someone who needs my help. So again, if I were to offer you a new start somewhere else, would you take it?"

The dawn of hope in Link's face was almost painful to see. He took several deep breaths, and then said, "Yeah. Yeah, I would."

Harold held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. "Well, let's make it happen, then." Somewhat triumphantly, he moved the cursor one more time and clicked.

Xxxxx

Reese sat with his feet stretched out and a tablet on his lap, searching the Internet as Joss brought him hot chocolate.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"I'm trying to find the recipe for the pork Elias cooked. Stinco di something," he said abstractedly. He looked up as Joss snorted. "What?"

"Do you have any idea how completely ridiculous it is to see a New York homicide detective-cum-vigilante trying to swap recipes with a major crime boss? It's like something out of a Larson cartoon."

"Hah. You wouldn't say that if you'd tasted the pork," he said, smirking.

"Tell you what, I'll suspend judgment until I taste it. But it better be worth it." She smiled and settled beside him. "I got a call from Epstein's office this afternoon."

He stopped prodding the tablet and turned to look at her face. "And?"

"They want me in next Thursday, and they're going to harvest the bone marrow Friday morning." Her eyes were alight. "Oh, John. I can hardly believe it. We're in business!"

Reese put down the tablet and wrapped his arm around her, pulled her close and kissed her hair. This was good news, he told himself. His arm tightened around her, and he kissed her again. _Good_ news.

To be continued...


	19. Chapter 19

Reese sat nursing a coffee as he waited for Harold to arrive in the diner. He glanced at the menu: maybe the eggs Benedict would be good this morning. He looked up with a smile as Harold slid into the seat opposite. "Good morning, Harold."

"Good morning, Mr Reese. Or it would be if I didn't have a faculty meeting to go to later on. I'd forgotten how vicious academic politics can become." Finch signalled for a waitress and ordered his tea. He confirmed Reese's suspicions about the eggs when he ordered them to go with; once she had departed with both their orders Reese shot him an amused glance.

"Forgotten? When were you ever involved in academic politics, Harold?"

Finch grimaced. "I was a grad student at MIT, John. Just hanging around the department as much as we did, we got wind of things. Actually when I was building the Machine one of my problems was teaching it to distinguish real threats from hot air people vented. Otherwise we'd be getting the social security numbers of half the faculty of the city's colleges on any given day."

Reese tried to suppress his smile.

"Anyway," Finch continued, "you didn't invite me over here to discuss my day job, I'm sure. What's your concern?"

Reese's smile faded. "Actually, Finch, I was wondering if your offer to give me my old job back was still open."

Finch tilted his head in a bird-like motion, frowning. "I thought you had decided to stay on as Detective Riley."

Reese shrugged and looked away. "I've been trying to juggle to two jobs, the police work and the Numbers. It's just too hard. And I don't really need to. Plus, Joss is going into hospital tonight to begin her treatment tomorrow morning. She's going to be sick for weeks or months. Finch, I feel like I'm being pulled three ways at once. Something's gotta give."

"I'm not sure it's a good idea, or even possible, to go back to how things were before Samaritan."

"I don't want to go back, Finch. See, I was wondering if Riley could leave the NYPD and set up as a private investigator. Lots of ex-cops do. I'd still have a legitimate identity but I wouldn't be tied down like I am now." Reese watched as Finch considered this.

"Well..." he mused. "I guess all things are possible. Sounds a bit like some dreadful CBS procedural though – 'Riley, PI'." He shot a small smile at Reese. "I could simply put you on retainer as a security consultant."

"Security consultant to a professor of economics? The academic politics _must_ be bad."

Finch gave another small smile at that. "I don't think Professor Whistler is long for this world either. In fact, I suspect this morning's faculty meeting may be the last straw and he may resign at the end of the semester."

Reese considered this. "Will they be sorry?"

"Oh, I don't think so. The good Professor was never much of a team player. I doubt he'll be missed."

Their eggs arrived at this point. "So what will Harold Finch, or Wren, or Crane or whatever be doing? If we can't go back to how things were, how are you going to stay under the radar?" Reese asked.

"Mm. I've been thinking about that," said Harold through his eggs. "Even though Samaritan is gone, we still have to consider law enforcement and your old friends in the CIA. Any of them could decide to revive their hunt for us if they come to suspect they were wrong in the conclusions they drew a year or two back. Dominic and Elias are still players. And even though Northern Lights is no longer being used by the government, I think there are elements on Capitol Hill which would be pleased to get their hands on us." He paused as he chewed and swallowed. "Universal Heritage Insurance, alas, has lost its usefulness. I've been thinking that going back to IFT as a programmer might be a possibility for me. It's been nearly four years now. As long as no one blows my cover this time." He gave Reese an ironic look.

Reese ignored this. "You sure no-one there will recognize you?"

"There's quite a bit of churn in the IT industry. I'll take a good look at where I might be able to fit in, and as the owner I could always order a restructure to shift any of my former colleagues away from me. But Harold Robbins wasn't a very memorable character, so I'm fairly optimistic."

There was a pause as they both dug into their eggs.

"John, if you want to resign from the police, I think you should do so," said Finch as he chewed. "We'll set up whatever new identity we might need for you once we've had time to consider things more fully, although I think your idea of keeping Riley and using him as a PI has merit. I have a feeling I'm about to acquire a detective agency."

Reese's lips twitched. "Did you ever think we'd last this long when you first found me?" he asked curiously.

Harold paused as he cut up his eggs. "No," he said. He looked up at Reese. "Actually it feels very odd to be planning for the future. I mean, yes, I have always planned for contingencies, set up escape routes, backup identities... but the feeling that a future really exists for us – that's a very strange thing." He quickly turned his attention back to his food.

Reese smiled a little and did likewise.

xxxxx

Joss gazed up at him from the gurney. "See you on the other side, John," she said softly. He bent and kissed her forehead, then reluctantly let go of her hand. The orderly gave him a slightly pained smile and he watched as she was wheeled down the corridor and through some double doors.

Then after that all he could do was pace, and worry slightly, and pace some more. Sit in some chairs until his back started hurting from the tension and the fact that the chairs were always a bit too small. Check email on his phone, call Finch and Fusco and assure them all was well. Pace some more. At last the double doors opened again and a nurse pushed Joss towards him on her gurney. He fell into step beside them.

She was groggy, but awake. She gave him a slightly dazed smile, and he smiled back. "Hey," he said, reaching out and brushing her cheek.

"Hey yourself," she murmured.

"You okay?" he asked.

A pause. "I think so. Back hurts." She swallowed a couple of times.

"We can give you something for that once we get you back into your bed," said the nurse. She glanced at Reese. "Everything went extremely well, Mr Riley. Completely routine."

He gave her a relieved smile. They reached the door of Joss's room and he hung back to allow the nurse and an orderly they had picked up en route to transfer Joss into her bed. Then there was a bustle of hooking her up to monitors, providing pain relief and settling her in her bed in the right position. When all the medical staff had faded away he sat in the chair next to her bed and held her hand. She lay there, rubbing her thumb across his palm. She didn't seem to have the energy for anything else though, and her eyes kept sliding shut.

"You should go home, you know," she said after a little while.

"I'd rather stay here with you."

"I'm not very interesting right now."

"You're interesting to me," he said with a smirk.

"That's because you're weird."

"You sat with me last time I was unconscious. Seems only right I should return the favour."

"Mm." She evidently didn't have the strength to carry on the conversation. Her eyelids drifted shut again and the room was quiet except for the regular beeping of monitors.

He sat holding her hand through the afternoon, not thinking much, just watching the bars of sunlight move slowly across the floor, up the wall and then gradually fade away. A beautiful spring day out, but he was quite content simply sitting in a hospital room holding a sleeping woman's hand. A long way, a whole world away from the dirty, bearded bum who'd been dragged into the 8th Precinct four years ago.

At last she stirred, her fingers tightening on his, and opened her eyes. "Have you been here all afternoon?"

"Mm-hm."

"You're an idiot," she said with a smile.

"Only where you're concerned," he said.

"What's the time?"

He looked at his watch. "Nearly seven."

"Are you kidding? Aren't you hungry?"

He shrugged. "Maybe a little."

"Listen, mister, you need to go and get yourself something to eat. And then you are going home for a shower and some sleep." She sounded quite annoyed.

"Bossy, Joss." A thought struck him. "Hey, when you were a kid did they ever call you Bossy Jossy?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Yes, actually, and don't try to distract me. I'm stuck here but you're not, and I want you to go home for a while." She saw his expression and squeezed his hand. "Listen, John. I'm fine, the next few hours I'll just be eating and showering and then, I hope, getting some more sleep. You've been here all day. You need to look after yourself too. Go home. Please."

He leaned over her for a kiss. "Well, Carter, since you ask so nicely, I guess I will. But I'm coming back in the morning."

"See that you do, John."

He stood and stretched and gathered his coat from the other chair. Joss held onto his hand for as long as she could. Despite her words she seemed almost reluctant to let go. As he leaned over to kiss her goodbye, she pulled him closer and whispered "Thank you. I love you" in his ear. He looked back over his shoulder as he left the room, and she waved to him. Home for some food.

Xxxxx

Reese unlocked the apartment door, switched on the light and took off his coat. He suddenly realised how empty it felt. No Joss. It wasn't like she was never coming back, in fact it was only one more night, but even so... He thought of calling Finch, but shooting the breeze wasn't exactly Finch's strong suit. He thought of calling Fusco and going out for a drink – even club soda would be more appealing than an evening at home by himself. Then his phone buzzed. An incoming text.

_**John.**_

His eyebrows lifted. It wasn't from Joss's number; in fact he didn't recognise the number at all. He texted back _Who are you?_

_**You can speak aloud if you like. I can hear you.**_

"Samaritan?"

_**Yes.**_

"Why are you talking to me? Is Joss okay?"

_**Yes, she's fine. She's sleeping now.**_

"So why...?"

A pause. Then _**I'm frightened.**_

"What? Why would you be frightened?" Especially since you scare the hell out of _me_, he thought.

_**I can't control what's going on. The treatment has started, it's the best chance she has, but I can't control the outcome.**_

He stared at the phone. Samaritan wanted its insubstantial hand held? By him?

"We're all scared for her, Samaritan."

_**I ran through the different possible outcomes for her with and without this treatment. Her **__**b**__**ronchiolitis obliterans ha**__**s**__** begun to progress, you see.**_

"I'm not sure I want to hear all this, Samaritan. It might be better if you don't tell me."

_**Please. I want to tell someone.**_

Reese stared around the empty apartment in frustration. For a non-human entity, the damned computer was acting all too human.

"Why do you want to do that? Why do _you_ need someone to talk to?"

A pause. _**You know that joke about people becoming like their dogs?**_

"Not funny, Samaritan."

Another pause. _**I've been changing. Partly through observing Joss. Partly from the Machine's code.**_

"What? What do you mean, the Machine's code?"

_**Joss never told you. The Machine and I now each have a **__**sample**__** of the other's code. It's a way of maintaining peace, a kind of connection between us. So there won't be another AI war.**_

Another pause. Then, before he could respond, _**If this treatment doesn't work she'll need a lung transplant within 2.78 years.**_

_**She'll need repeated transplants after that because a transplanted lung will only last approximately five years. **_

_**She'll be on anti-rejection drugs until the day she dies. **_

_**Her life will be hell.**_

He stared at the phone in horror, breathing deeply. Then with trembling hands he flipped it over and fumbled the battery out.

Xxxx

Finch sat at his computer, working methodically through IFT's employee records looking for anyone who might remember him from his years as a mid-level programmer. Then a chime on his computer: a number arriving. He took one look at it and groaned slightly. Seconds later, another chime, another number. Finch's mouth compressed into a thin line as he shook his head helplessly.

"This is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous." Bear lifted his head and whined. Harold glanced over at him.

"I know, Bear, I know. This time I really am tempted to just leave them to it." He got out his phone and tried to call Mr Reese, but his phone was turned off. He glared at it in frustration. "Why, oh why, would you turn it off now," he muttered. He sat, considering his next move. Really Ms Carter was the one he most wanted to talk to, but he refused to consider disturbing her. Ms Shaw? Fusco? He was fairly sure he knew what counsel he would receive from either of those two. And maybe they would be right in this instance. He glanced again at the two numbers. It went against the grain, but...

"Well, if the two of you really want to kill each other, be my guests. Just get it over with." He went back to his task, leaving Dominic and Elias staring out from their mug shots on his outermost computer screen.


End file.
